Thursday 15 October 2009

770 - Happystone, Whitley Bay



Found a stone and gave it back to the sea. Then looked down and found this looking back up at me. Later, my good poet friend Ira Lightman pointed me to a poem by ee cummings:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

2 comments:

Sid Smith said...

This is probably my favourite ee cummings poem. I love that line...

"as small as a world and as large as alone."

A superb wrapping up of such huge and potentially cumbersome concepts. Thanks for reminding me about this one. I'm off to read some more ee

Steve Lancaster said...

Hi Sid,

There's an event in York on Sunday (1st) where a gallery has invited all kinds of people to submit work based on the poem. Let me see if I can find the link... here:

http://hiddententaclearts.weebly.com/current-project.html

The poem's bowled me over, too.