Hey, Everyone! This is Susie deVille, Founder & CEO of the Innovation & Creativity Institute. In today’s episode of the Aesthete Aperture, we are going just outside the front door of my cottage to witness the gentle unfolding of the beautiful rhododendron. There are several native species of rhodies on the Highlands Plateau, and they begin blooming in mid-May. Their blooms are brilliant, pom poms of color, ranging from white and pink to a purplish pink to a deep, reddish magenta. They are a favorite of bees and butterflies, as well as all of us who are fortunate enough to live in these mountains.
Looking at them this morning brought my favorite E.E. Cummings poem to mind, especially the line (“I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; …”). I decided to share the poem with you here, in its entirety, as it is a lovely celebration of blooming in all of its forms. Take a moment and consider what it is that opens you — delights you — and makes a shiver run down your spine. Walk toward whatever that is and bring it more fully into your life.
“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
~ E.E. Cummings
