There often comes a time in the middle of the winter when I find myself ardently wishing I could swim with my Klode friends. A morning last week was one of those times. It's because I read the following poem:
Ghazal: Sea
by Moira Egan
with a final couplet by e. e. cummings
As Karen Blixen said, the cure’s the sea
—or sweat, or tears—but I prefer the sea.
In fact, it’s homeopathy. Why cry
with eyes baptised (if reddened) by the sea?
The metaphors of fabric come to mind:
cool silk or aqua velvet, summer sea
(or better, come to body: intimate,
enveloped skin on skin, the lover sea).
The bone-ache deep, the pains gone unexplained:
for now just dive, ameliorator sea.
The “mermaid’s tears,” smoothed glass or plastic: lovely
but hazardous to creatures of the sea.
This evening’s rough: Poseidon snaps my straps.
Pathetic fallacy, bipolar sea.
And in their one-piece suits, the ladies age
and silver, laugh and rage: September sea.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.
Copyright © 2025 by Moira Egan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 5, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
And here is the ee cummings poem from which she stole the final two lines. It is also redolent of our shared swimming joy, just in a different way.
maggie and milly and molly and may
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
Copyright © 1956, 1984, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust from The Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
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