maggie and milly and molly and may

e.e. cummings (1894—1962) ↗

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

Notes

cummings uses a sun-drenched, whimsical afternoon at the shore to show how easily the heavy, complex self can be dissolved by simple, fleeting encounters with the sea. Each girl finds a different fragment of her own psyche: a shell, a starfish, a crab, a smooth stone, proving that who we are is not a rigid monument, but something fluid and beautifully untethered. It perfectly captures the spirit of July, reminding us that whenever we cast off our adult anxieties and choose to lose ourselves in play, it is always our true, unburdened self we find. #poetry #beach #spirit #sunny #shore

About the author

e.e. cummings ↗

Edward Estlin Cummings, commonly known as e e cummings or E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was imprisoned in an internment camp, which provided the basis for his novel The Enormous Room (1922). The following year he published his first collection of poetry, Tulips and Chimneys, which showed his early experiments with grammar and typography. He wrote four plays, the most successful of which were HIM (1927) and Santa Claus: A Morality (1946). He wrote EIMI (1933), a travelog of the Soviet Union, and delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in poetry, published as i—six nonlectures (1953). Fairy Tales (1965), a collection of short stories, was published posthumously.