here's to opening and upward

Catrin Welz-Stein

here's to opening and upward

here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap

and to your (in my arms flowering so new)

self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain

and here's to silent certainly mountains; and to

a disappearing poet of always, snow

and to morning; and to morning's beautiful friend

twilight (and a first dream called ocean) and

let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid

down with ought with because with every brain

which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel (but up

with joy; and up with laughing and drunkenness)

here's to one undiscoverable guess

of whose mad skill each world of blood is made

(whose fatal songs are moving in the moon

e.e. cummings

I imagine cummings and his wife walking and getting their eyes so full of spring that he breaks out with this toast "here's to opening and upward", in an exclamation of appreciation. As if to say, look at all this spontaneous up-rising and breaking out of shells and casings and dirt! Let's do the same. Let's not be held in or pent up by fear or duty or obligation - let's be what we were meant to be and do what we were meant to do with feeling and joy. Because we can. Because it's good! And because it's spring. Let's take off our masks of sophistication and knowing (all pretense) and trust the "one undiscoverable guess" that life will always break out into newness like this, and that we will flower and re-flower with it.