When the World Is Puddle Wonderful

Singing in the Rain1

It was the first day of spring yesterday and in Pittsburgh, where I’m visiting my son Toby and his family, it was raining. The rain gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite spring poems, which describes the world as “mud-luscious” and “puddle-wonderful.” It also describes the freshness I feel as I play with my two granddaughters.

 e. e. cummings describes bettyandisbel dancing, and while three-week-old Etta is too young to move about on her own, her older sister Esmé, just under two, makes up for it. She has learned to jump and takes every opportunity to do so. She also loves costumes and yesterday, at the local Jewish Community Center, insisted on being dressed up as Little Elmo.

As she cavorted about the playroom in a large sleeper suit with Elmo’s head as her hood, I thought of Little Toby in John Cheever’s short story “Country Husband”:

He loops the magic cape over his shoulders and, climbing onto the footboard of his bed, he spreads his arms and flies the short distance to the floor, landing with a thump that is audible to everyone in the house but himself. 

The imagination soars higher than facts on the ground at this age.

And as Esmé was dancing, in the background the goat-footed balloon man–which is to say Pan, the Greek god of animal spirits–was whistling.

[in Just-]

By e. e. cummngs

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

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