Is that the ocean? Yes. Yes, it is.

Sometimes what's in front of you is so obvious and good and unexpected, that you have to doublecheck, just to be sure. And so the feeling sticks.

From nearly the moment we sat on a bus bound for Atlantic City -- which stopped only briefly, before we could blow all our money on keno and the Billy Idol concert happening there (poor, poor Billy) -- I had flashes of the poem below in my head. I had only the ending memorized, though, wishing I had a way to look up the rest, quietly happy that I was nowhere near a computer to do so. Back now, that same head packed with enough to last for quite awhile, I find it online. Silly as cummings can be, totally on point as he often is:


maggie and millie 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 discovered 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 at the sea