e. e. cummings |

Coburn’s Bottom

This Winter past was tenacious, a Narnian epic of cold and ice and snow that took heed of D. Thomas’s advice to “…not go gentle…” Even so, Spring arrived this past week, though with very little fanfare, very few signs to tell the difference between Wednesday’s Winter and Thursday’s Spring.

There are hummocks of snow on the leeward side of slopes, dirty brown and coarse with thaw and freeze. In what some locals call Coburn’s Bottom, there is still ice where we would expect to find clear vernal pools, and ice on the quarry as well. Near the Cut Off we would ordinarily see signs of spring wildflowers: at the very least, their tender shoots breaking ground. But not this year, not yet. No trees that I have seen are budding and even the bane of The Quarry Farm, Japanese honeysuckle, seems lifeless and brown.

But as obstinate as this Winter has proven itself to be, Spring is equally resolute. The signs are there if you look sharp and keep your ears open.

Skunks and raccoons and squirrels all shriek and whistle and bark their intentions, whether amorous or combative. Turkey vultures are making their way back, riding what thermals they can find and woodcocks, too, those strange little baseballs with wings and beaks, buzzing and whickering in the night. I have seen a killdeer or two and heard a red-winged blackbird. And there is duckweed on the quarry and Canada geese and mallards and wood ducks.

So, rather than the raucous, slippery immediacy of Cumming’s in just-, we’re experiencing a different sort of Spring, something more along the lines of…

Spring Is Like a Perhaps Hand
By E.E. Cummings

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.

I woke up this morning with this in my head:

[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

I have a passion for poetry and cummings is one of my favorite artists. Inevitably, this particular piece of work comes to mind at some point in March. While not the first sign of Spring, it is a significant one for me. Still, you needn’t look to the page, or even delve into the convolutions of my sleep-addled mind to find the artistry of onrushing Spring.

Of late I’ve seen the return of turkey vultures and red-winged blackbirds and American robins in arguing masses so large that they’ve painted an acre of the big back field nearly white with their droppings. I’ve heard the buzz of a woodcock and the whickering of its wings as it flew toward the moon to prove its worth to a potential mate. Skunks and ‘coons and squirrels quarrel and fight in the woods and Canada geese and mallard ducks, in flocks and individual pairs, holler from the quarry.

In the lowest lying areas of The Quarry Farm, back in the woods and well below the quarry itself, on the ground referred to by locals as Coburn’s Bottom, vernal pools have already formed. These temporary ponds serve as habitat for a host of ephemeral animals: fairy shrimp and salamanders and mayfly nymphs and dragonflies. Within a few months, the pools will have evaporated, but their inhabitants remain in burrows underground or as eggs, tiny packets of a potential future.

And then there’s the greening of the woods, with mosses already climbing up the trees and laying soft blankets on the ground. It’s easy to forget that this whole area was once rainforest. It’s easy to forget, that is, until you take the time to walk into an Ohio woods and take an honest look around. And if it’s not a matter of forgetting – if, in fact, you didn’t know – then the realization of where you are is an epiphany and you’ll never look at a stand of trees in Northwest Ohio in quite the same way again.

(e.e. cumming’s [in Just-] was originally published in The Dial, Volume LXVIII, Number 5: May, 1920)

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e. e. cummings

perhaps Spring

Signs

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