Spring Fever

I am not well. I got home tonight and drank a gigantic cup of tea and now my throat feels a bit better but still, general grossness is the predominant feeling of the day. Which was independently crappy anyway. We've definitely hit the "it's beautiful and I just want to be outside" portion of the spring and being inside in my little cubicle with no exposure to natural light is killing me. Or at least making me very whiny.

I'm also feeling cranky about the visit from the Pope although that will dissipate if the traveling inconveniences everyone is worrying about fail to materialize. I have to go to a Passover seder fairly close to St. Patrick's Cathedral but hopefully any fuss there will be over before the evening. I might just be able to avoid those streets anyway. That would be nice. I'm probably making something out of nothing just because I'm feeling icky.

Anyway, now that I've complained extensively, I thought I'd post a couple springy poems by E. E. Cummings, who I always think of as a spring and summery sort of poet.

O SWEET SPONTANEOUS

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
..........fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
......beauty........how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
........(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
..........thou answerest
them only with
.......................spring)



SPRING IS LIKE A PERHAPS HAND

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and