O Sweet Spontaneous Earth: EE Cummings & Spring

Here we are, almost in 'official' Spring. Blue skies, green days, birds singing. I love Spring!  My favourite season. I love its get-up-and-go energy. I love seeing the sun again after so long. I love the 'spring' in everyone's step. I love the blue skies full of potential. I love the feeling of things coming back to life again: trees, flowers, birds, people, dreams. Hibernation over. All the budding and blooming  of possibilities, as Spring 'like a perhaps hand' spreads its seeds of curiousity, what ifs and miraculous maybes, across the land, to take root in and reawaken sleepy spirits. 

And maybe someone who loved Spring as much as I do: EE Cummings. Once again, I  dedicate this post (toast) to him. Maybe to every creative, Spring represents a time of inspiration after a fallow season. It certainly inspires me! And to explain that inspiration, I'm handing over to EE, because it's difficult to word-ify.

No one can describe Spring like this poet. Forget Wordsworth and his dull verses about daffodils! This is a time when our 'winging selves sing' and a time when 'everywhere space tastes of the amazement which is hope.' It is a time when our spirits soar, because 'all that was doubtful's certain, timid's bold; old's youthful and reluctant's eager now.' Youth and certainty and boldness, yes! And how do  you explain that skip in the step? Why it's when 'life's star prances the blinding blue' of course! Nothing, as he notes, is this 'keen' as Spring is.

EE Cummings is the only poet in my opinion who can capture the zest and essence of the season in words. His poems on Spring are such a joy to read. I dare you to read 'sweet spring is your' and try not to singsong along! Indeed, love is in the air when Spring is, 'for springtime is lovetime.' The birds and the bees and all that yes, but who would have thought it's because everyone breathes 'quite so many kinds of yes.' That pulsing of possibility, that pounding of passion, that high of hope. A time when we forget 'if' and remember 'yes.' Yes is what it's all about. 

I love what this poet can do with words, how he transforms them into energy, makes them  grand gramophones of emotion - that intangible, tangled mess of endorphins and adrenaline and thoughts and aches - into actual typeface. Incredible.

Included below are a few Spring-themed poems of his (there are many more!) that I particularly love. As I said before of EE Cummings' poems, I love the energy in them, the greening lyrics, the flowering sentiment, the 'zing' as they penetrate the heart via the mind and lodge themselves there, little green volts, sounding a chorus of heartsong. Read and enjoy and feel the budding and blooming of your mood as you do.

Happy Spring!

~ Siobhán.  

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

without breaking anything

 








now winging selves sing sweetly
now winging selves sing sweetly,while ghosts(there
and here)of snow cringe;dazed an earth shakes sleep
out of her brightening mind:now everywhere
space tastes of the amazement which is hope

gone are those hugest hours of dark and cold
when blood and flesh to inexistence bow
(all that was doubtful's certain,timid's bold;
old's youthful and reluctant's eager now)

anywhere upward somethings yearn and stir
piercing a tangled wrack of wishless known;
nothing is like this keen(who breathes us)air
immortal with the fragrance of begin

winter is over--now(for me and you,
darling!)life's star prances the blinding blue

in time of daffodils  
in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

sweet spring is your 

sweet spring is your

time is my time is our

time for springtime is lovetime

and viva sweet love"

(all the merry little birds are

flying in the floating in the

very spirits singing in

are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come

awandering awondering

but any two are perfectly

alone there's nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun

i never knew and neither did you

and everybody never breathed

quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves

each herself by opening

but shining who by thousands mean

only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly

tiny winging darting floating

merry in the blossoming

always joyful selves are singing)

"sweet spring is your

time is my time is our

time for springtime is lovetime

and viva sweet love"

*For more ee cummings, click here