Oh Spring!

Good afternoon. I've been in ecstacy over Spring just now, having spent 3 hours outside with not much to do but play with the dogs and read... and of course tan. A mockingbird was serenading me and the Starlings were impatient to have the small field of grass back. And I just sat there until i was worn out with the sun and breeze. And now I'm back for my normal afternoon of a Gilmore rerun and perhaps... some yard work later after lunch. I was going to commemorate such a glorious midday with a poem about Spring and I went of course to Shakespeare and then I thought well maybe somebody else like Tennyson. Then i just lazily googled it. "Poems for Spring." And it came across me that I would enjoy being a teacher bcs i could run my hands over all the delicious words of writers past all the time- that and good ole indoctrination. SO i ran across this on a website of poems to "Spring":
in Just—
spring when the world is mud—
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee

It's an eecummings poem and it's only the first portion of it. Of course the magic internet box doesn't tell you that its excerpting it and it claims it for spring bcs you know, the word luscious and spring are in there... and the balloon man is whistling. So what could be the harm in that. But the poem in full has a much more ominous undercurrent. And i really like the poem- But i cant' remember when i studied the poem and its even vaguer if I wrote a paper on it, which i think i did- but here is the poem in full (just for you curious studious types): (also i couldn't quite get the staging right-- don't hold it against me)

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 bettyandisabel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
For cummings placement and spacing was really very central to how a poem should be read and understood and they didn't even do that right. And okay- that balloonMan is creepy as fuck as the expression goes. The descrips for him in total are lame, queer, old, and goat-footed. So he's either a pied-piper type figure or he's either baccanalian as he quite deliberately lures the children from their games with his whistling and his progress thru a park or a neighborhood. And if that kind of guy was luring my kids or even myself, eternally youthful as I am, i'd have some issues. Is all i'm saying. Which reminds me also of a time when my HistoryofArt teacher asked us to find ways in which images are appropriated and taken out of context- i scored an A by finding an advert for Vegas- coupled, quite literally implying such, with the Statue entitled The Rape of the Sabine Women. The advert tag said, "So good you'll never want to leave"... And if you didn't know the statue you'd think wow, that woman really doesn't want to leave- Man, i was going to say more but now i'm sort of getting irked- And perhaps a tad angry about the missappropriation of things... but gah, it's SPRING! So nevermind the goat-man and the evils of advertising- and let's focus on:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

.WCW.