Poems and memories

The birds are singing and I think the sun is getting ready to rise. I haven't gone to bed yet, instead I've been watching In her Shoes and getting sentimental. 

I like that film a lot and I've seen it many times. There's much to say about it but what brought on my sentimentality tonight was the poem by e. e. cummings Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is reading to Rose (Toni Collette) on Rose's wedding. It's a beautiful poem called i carry your heart, and it's the kind of poem I'd like to know, well, by heart.

The thing about romantic poetry (in English) is that it always reminds me of Jenny. She once, when I was in Australia in 2001, sent me three poems by e-mail. I had written to her and told her that I was feeling a bit lonely and sad, and so she sent me those poems. I didn't get them until a few days later because I'd been out walking in the desert, out of reach. But when I got back to civilisation (Alice Springs in fact) I got them. I printed them out and went to a café and had a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and read them. I was so incredibly touched by them, by the gesture.

I'm not generally sentimental, but I have a few weak spots, or what you might call them, and Jenny is such a spot. And the funny thing is that it doesn't have to be those three particular poems to remind me. None of the three poems were by e. e. cummings for example, like the poem in the film, but it doesn't matter. It's not the poem in itself, it's the poem as such that reminds me. 

My life would be considerably poorer without the poems, without Jenny. And even though we haven't seen each other for many years, my happy memories will never disappear. 

And now, I borrow my last words from another poem by cummings, maggie and milly and molly and may. The last words are:

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea