Spring has Sprung!

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"Aprile is the cruelest month" according to Chaucer who had clearly never spent March in Louisiana battling the howling winds! Today, however, all the misery is forgotten as spring appears to be making a guest appearance after a weekend of truly miserable rain (I volunteered for Hogs for the Cause www.hogsforthecause.org which degenerated into a mud bath within minutes of opening. Fortunately the turnout was incredibly good and the barbecue was nectar of the gods.

I spent a wonderful morning discussing Chinese culture with the bright students of Isidore Newman School http://www.newmanschool.org/home and emerged into brilliant sunlight which made me think of the last lines of ee cumming's poem "if i have made, my lady, intricate" which sum up the creeping of delight into the psyche;



if i have made, my lady, intricate


if i have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind-if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy-if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

-let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death"-
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul.


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