Mazel Tov, IlanaRei & Jackie!

My friends IlanaRei and Jackie were wed today. I attended their wedding with our mutual friend Sara; we were also guests at their “rehearsal” dinner party and bridal shower. All of the events were wonderful, and much of the wonderfulness was the result of the couple’s and their family’s long hard labor of love.

One of our favorite moments was when one of their family members included an excellent performance from memory of E. E. Cummings’ poem “Somewhere I Have Never Traveled” in her toast:

somewhere i have never traveled, 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 skillfully, 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 color 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

(You’ll note that like countless other fabulous people, including one of the brides, Cummings was a metro Bostonian. And in honor of the other bride, note that he was also something of a New Yorker.)

Best wishes in your travels together, IRT & JG. May we all meet the best companions for our travels. Mazel tov!!

Click here to see my Picasa Web Album of the wedding gift I made for them.