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

The Boy

Here is my latest poem:

See the boy
He’s scared and scarred

The tears have dried
The pain subsided

But the memories
The memories will never go away

It wasn’t always so
There were pleasant times

But they don’t even up
The last ugly years

The blows fell hard
The negligence was even worse

Now the father is gone
And the boy is alone

He battles on
The fight now with himself

A Cold, A Poem, and Love

I have a cold, my eyes are sensitive to light and my nose is a mess. The nose isn't that big a problem, but the eyes... I would like to spend all my time under a blanket in a dark room. But I can't. It makes me restless, so here I am.

What is there to write about? That North Korea shouldn't have nukes? Well, they shouldn't, but I'm not in the mood to argue now. I want to write about something else, about a poem I got yesterday. It was from a girl, and it was so sweet and loving it hasn't left me for a second since reading it. I was telling her the other day that I write poems, and she wanted to see them. After she had read some, she said that she wanted to write as well. She wrote three and I had no idea what to expect. But they were wonderful. And one of them were for me. Me. Fancy that.