ee cummings for Poetry Friday

Yesterday I posted a brief review of the video Sea Nasties. After a half hour or so of Leslie Nielsen's dark humor, the video ends on a completely different note, with Nielsen speaking, very movingly, this ee cummings poem:

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

Apart from my anxiety about poor molly, I think this is a lovely poem.

I had another Cummings quote in my head --"an instrument to measure Spring with," and looking for that on line I found this genuine article:

A 1613 pocket sundial from the Harvard Collection of Scientific Instruments, featured in the Harvard Magazine March April 2002 issue as part of an enthralling collection of Spring Miscellanies.

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Big A little a today.