in-Just

e. e. cummings is a poet I enjoyed while growing up and probably the reason I don’t use capital letters in my name unless signing something, although I use them elsewhere, being the English/grammar nerd I am.

I find it ironic that there are three somewhat random caps in the poem and I love the way he used spacing and hyphens as well as sometimes smushing words together. When I lived in Steamboat Springs, Colorado for a few year, spring was certainly mud-luscious!  In fact, we had mud season between winter and spring and at the library, everyone left their shoes at the door.  Wasn’t spring “puddle-wonderful” when you were a child, when puddles were still places to float boats and stomp in, rather than irritations that soaked your good shoes?

There are photos and poems that make you “feel” whatever they show.  This poem is spring for me: the anticipation after a long winter, the child-like joy of play and make-believe, that inexpressible feeling in your heart that any and everything is possible.

[in Just-]
By e. e. cummings
in Just-
spring          when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far          and             wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles
far
and
wee