'It takes courage to grow up'

 

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – e.e. cummings 

 

After I took this photo on a trek into the Rocky Mountains, e.e. cummings' quote seemed apropos to describe it.  Born in October of 1894, Cummings wrote nearly 3,000 poems, 2 autobiographical novels, 4 plays and several essays.

  

Some of his poems are free verse (with no concern for rhyme or meter), but many have a recognizable sonnet structure of 14 lines, with an intricate rhyme scheme. A number feature a typographically exuberant style, with words, parts of words, or punctuation symbols scattered across the page.  Also a painter, Cummings understood the importance of presentation and used typography to "paint a picture."  For Saturday's Poem, here is Cummings',

          

a wind has blown the rain away

a wind has blown the rain away and blown
the sky away and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand. I think i too have known
autumn too long

          (and what have you to say,
wind wind wind—did you love somebody
and have you the petal of somewhere in your heart
pinched from dumb summer?
          O crazy daddy
of death dance cruelly for us and start

the last leaf whirling in the final brain
of air!)Let us as we have seen see
doom’s integration………a wind has blown the rain

away and the leaves and the sky and the
trees stand:
        the trees stand. The trees,
suddenly wait against the moon’s face.