POETRY IN LOCKDOWN: 7

It's Easter Saturday and the sun is shining all over England. Today (in ordinary times) families would be hurling li-los, wetsuits, surfboards, buckets and spades into the car boot and heading for the sea-side. But we are in lockdown. The only beach most of us can get to is in the imagination. So here I offer a virtual day on the beach in the form of a poem from the American lower-case poet,  e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e.e. 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