Category Archives: memory

Love Letter

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We’ll see summer come again
Darkness fall and seasons change*

 

In the early afternoon he sat down to write a letter, having skipped lunch out of boredom with eating and the realization that preparing a meal would require too much effort. It was a warm day and the fans were humming, lulling him into a state of torpor. But he thought probably writing was still possible. It was worth a try because he had to finally say what needed to be said.

“I’m sorry I said that I loved you,” he wrote. “It was uncalled-for.” He raised the tip of the pencil and turned the barrel in his fingertips. “You always said that I don’t speak the way I think and I can’t think the way I ought to think, so I think you should have seen this coming and been prepared with something passing as tolerance, even pity. After all, you knew my limitations better than anyone, especially me.”

He paused and looked out the open window where the sun was high and bright on a single cypress tree in the distance, on a hill. He wasn’t hungry yet.

“I remember when we met at college and after class I saw you by the elevator, dressed in purple. We rode down together and went for coffee, to talk about philosophy. Spring came and rainy days and nights but little time to stop and think. The time went by so fast. There were things I thought I wanted and what I thought I wanted from you I didn’t want and never got. What you wanted from me, you took. But your purple dress was beautiful.”

Hunger caught up with him and he went out of the room and down the stairs, past the slotted windows shaped like pears that revealed only the climbing wisteria. In the kitchen were garden tomatoes and cheese, chilled water in a canning jar. He sat for a while and looked at the pictures in a catalog: Flannel shirts, jackets of quilted down, sturdy boots.

Autumn was coming and he would be alone. In solitude, he always said, there was less friction. So his life should have been like an oiled sheet of ice, except for all his memories. They would never leave him entirely alone.

He put the catalog down when he remembered the pencil he had left upstairs. It was bright yellow, waiting in the light on the unfinished page. He climbed the stairs slowly, thinking about how the letter should end. It was a long time coming and maybe the letter should be about time. She would have gray hair by now. Grandchildren. She was living or not, somewhere in the turning world. So for years he’d been writing the letter, again and again, watching as graphite filled the page with pain he couldn’t remember if he ever felt.

At the third turning of the twisted stairs, an odd old bellied window showed the wisteria was blooming lavender and purple in the late summer light. “If the blossoms are purple, what color was her dress?” It worried him for a few steps but the thought was gone before he reached the desk. He picked up the pumpkin-colored pencil and started again.

“Please forgive me for saying I loved you but I was overwhelmed by your wine-colored dress and all the darkness in your eyes, and the white shorts you wore at the lake. I was stunned by your courage with the boat and your soft brown hair. I saw that you would live forever, always nineteen, and the only things that frightened you were what I said and a boring life. Come back so I can never say it again, not for another forty years.”

In time he looked up from the paper to the window but the sun had set and the old oak tree was gone from view. Inside the room, everything was tinted faintly orange by the shade of his lamp. He crossed the room and looked out again but there was nothing to see and all of the friction of others was gone from his life. Below on the trellis, the wisteria was climbing up to him with flowers black as night. He pressed his forehead to the glass and said to evening, “I love you.”

 

 

J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed

*The Grateful Dead

 

******

I wrote this flash fiction piece after reading an article about the writings on memory of neurologist Oliver Sacks, on the subjectivity and communal interdependence of memory. My idea was to create a piece in which the present seems to change memory and memories seem to color the present. The inconsistencies in recollection and color are intentional. There are allusions to the Kafka quote I posted recently, and to Ash Wednesday by Eliot,which is basically an allusion to Dante. And while I was writing, I was listening to The Weather Report Suite by The Dead.

There is, it seems, no mechanism in the mind or the brain for ensuring the truth, or at least the veridical character, of our recollections. We have no direct access to historical truth, and what we feel or assert to be true … depends as much on our imagination as our senses. There is no way by which the events of the world can be directly transmitted or recorded in our brains; they are experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, which is different in every individual to begin with, and differently reinterpreted or reexperienced whenever they are recollected. . . . Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain. [Link]

 

The Music Never Stopped

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted that I’d been on a journey; a little break for family and fun. I went to the gold rush foothills northeast of Sacramento, then my brother and I went to Santa Clara for the first final concert of The Grateful Dead. Fare Thee Well, it was called.

Fare you well my honey
Fare you well my only true one
All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone*

2015-06-27 20.36.35Click to Enlarge

We had a beautiful, awesome time. It was a great day. The old guys still have it, and there were rainbows full of sound, fireworks, calliopes and clowns. I tell you, brothers and sisters, there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.

2015-07-05 11.01.09

In the days and weeks after the show, the tide of my emotional life continued to rise. I found myself listening to and watching the old songs and shows far more frequently than normal. The tide ripped: I was at once happy and grateful that we’d been at this wonderful event together, like a reunion, and also melancholy because it was the last of its kind.

We’ve since learned that a new band has been formed, so maybe there will be tunes to fill the air again.

The sun will shine in my back door some day
March winds will blow all my troubles away

One day my brother shared a link to an audio stream of the last show we saw together before Jerry Garcia died. The strange thing was, I thought we’d been to more shows after that. Nope, it was the last. Over 25 years, my emotions have built a vague sense of false memory. My mind has sentimentalized concerts into existence, and shuffled years like playing cards. Fascinating.

I’ve tried many times to write about Memory. It’s difficult. I don’t mean I tried to write about memories, although I have and a lot. I’m talking about Memory itself: what it is and how it works, and what we mean when we talk about the time that seems to have already passed. It’s hard to handle.

The Buddha said we’re not made of what we’ve done, what we have, or where we live. We are made of what we think. I say we exist as consciousness and time. But nobody really knows what either of those things is.

Everything we are and everything we do, as individuals or as groups, depends on feelings; our reactions to the stories we tell ourselves about what seems to be going on. Everything we think or believe is made of our feelings about it, including what we think we remember.

“Indeed, feelings don’t just matter — they are what mattering means.”
– Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

If we are made of consciousness and time, then consciousness plus time equals story. Life, the Universe, and Everything depends on Story.

Think about what you did in the last hour before the last time you feel asleep, and you’ll find a story.

Imagine the next time when someone will deliberately make you cry, and that’s a story.

Life is fragments, holograms, shadows, made of emotion. Memory is just impressions of feelings, and we’re almost completely incapable of being objective about them.

Sun went down in honey.
Moon came up in wine.
Stars were spinnin’ dizzy,
Lord, the band kept us so busy
We forgot about the time.**

So I’m going to forgive myself for believing – vaguely, wrongly – that we went to more Dead shows than we did, and went to more shows after the last one before Jerry Died.

Richard Bach wrote this:

“The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.”

“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.
You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”

So when the sun goes down wherever you are, and you remember holding  someone’s hand for the first or the last time, or some other magic lantern scene of joy or shame, what matters is not epistemology. Even honesty may be less than clarity. What matters is how you felt, and how that makes you feel. You are an artist of emotions. Write it down, or give it to the wind.

* Grateful Dead, Brokedown Palace
** Grateful Dead, The Music Never Stopped

Watermelon Memory

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Watermelons are in the stores again. I saw some today, large rafts of watermelons looking confidently variegated. They know they’re all about the mystery. Schroedinger’s fruit, both sweet and not, ripe and not, until opened. I could smell peaches too but I was after other things — yogurt, bread, soup — so the watermelons and peaches had to wait.

So what’s the point? Just that I like the word watermelon. Also rainbow, piano, and river. Peace is a good word, but arguably subjective, inconclusive. Watermelon is a faithful, unambiguous, and explicit word. It means what it is and it sits in the mouth just long enough to make its point.

Watermelon is a memory word for me, like fireworks or campout, thought not laden as Christmas. When I remember watermelon, I think of a poem I read in the 1970s, called Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle. Which I’ve never had, I think; only fresh for me, thanks.

During that summer–
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was–
Watermelons ruled.

And here’s my take on the topic of watermelon memory, a repost from a few years back. I like this poem. The person addressed is not my child, by the way; I have none. This is a personal poem, nonetheless.

 

Watermelon

Child, if you care to remember
this world, this life
you dream like a path
of certain distance quickly
walked and centered on a hill,
if you care to open it like
watermelon in summer
or like a prayer box
bearing a constellation of crosses
and sunsets, I hope
you consider your father,
his overtures to death,
his music, and like sunlight
through the sprinkler
on a simple greening lawn,
his smile.

 

This post from a few years ago seems complimentary.
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Watermelon by Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

As Memories Go

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There’s an interesting thing that happens with early childhood memory. It becomes infused and confused with memories of later events, with family photos and home movies, with other media. Memory can be heavily influenced.

I think that’s what’s happened with my memories of the day John F. Kennedy was murdered. I couldn’t really remember it, right? I was only two years old.

What I think I remember is being with my Mom in the little den or “TV room” of our house, and that the room was full of a heavy and palpable sorrow.

That’s pretty vague, as memories go. But it has always seemed like the best first reaction and it has served me well as years have gone by. It was right to grieve because a lot was lost, most poignantly not just a president; two men died that day, both fathers.

For the record, there’s no way Oswald shot Kennedy from the sixth floor of that building. An impossible shot, and Kennedy was hit from the opposite direction. Oswald killed the policeman, and took the fall for killing the president.

I’ve heard it said that the nation’s innocence died that day, but I wouldn’t say that. This nation has never been innocent. Naive maybe. I would say the murder of our president was a serious blow to our self-image, and that what followed was a crisis of identity. A kind of schism, not unlike the personality disorder we’re experiencing now. But I digress.

The single image of those days that has remained with me for fifty years is not the First Lady on the trunk of the car, or Johnson taking the oath on the plane, or the cortege in the streets of Washington.

jfkchurchjohnsalute

It serves to remind us that presidents don’t belong to us, they work for us. They belong to their families, just like everyone else. John Jr. was only six months older than me, you understand. I got to grow up with a loving Dad. And while I was let outside to play in just a little while, I have to imagine he never was.

 

On A Hill

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Today was Easter and I hope it was happy for you. I had a good day. But on April 8 each year, our family remembers the passing of our beloved dog Stella.* It’s been 12 years, which is difficult to believe. Time has flown.

Here’s a flash fiction piece. It’s not about Stella, but about the furtive and fragmentary nature of memory. And there is a dog in it.

If you want to, you can listen to an audio reading of the piece.

On A Hill

There is no wind today, to stir the foxtails and fennel on the hill. There is just a muted fog, following a night of fog through a week of fog and rain. And a man standing on the hill, looking for the sunlight he believes is up there somewhere.

He loves the hill. When the wind is up, you might see three hawks, or five red-tailed hawks at once, standing in the sky as if hung on wires. Then one by one, they break and fall on field mice in the oat grass field below. The first time she let him hold her, they were here. And there where the trail goes through a stand of eucalyptus, their first kiss. They sat on a fallen log – close together – as the sun went down, and a great owl floated over, down the arroyo and away.

Or maybe it was not a woman but a dog. He grows confused. But yes, a young dog. They walked on this hill as the sun went down, into the ocean there, past that point of land. And the sun set with a lip of rose and a tongue of burnt orange.

He went with the dog another day – the sun high and bright – to where the trail falls between crags of volcanic rock to the pitch-soiled beach. The tide was out and the dog ran between the piles of drying kelp and back and forth to the ebbing foam, chasing a yellow ball he threw. No hawks then, but pelicans in their morning dives for food, lifting again heavy with fish.

Damn the fog. He can hear the oil crew boat come about and back through the swells to tie up at the pier. But he cannot see the belch of gray-black diesel exhaust from the stern, the men on deck pitching lines and tying up, and the scattering gulls.

That bright, clear day when the dog ran here, the boats came in just so, engines revving to control the approach. The dog lay down in the damp sand, afraid, ears flat against her head. He went and held her in his arms as blue herons floated over, wings still and silent, caught by light.

It’s hard to be of comfort in the face of dread, of nightfall, and looming grief. That summer he was young, and the woman was young. They left the hill and walked through the stand of trees in the falling dark, to the thicket of bamboo by the railroad. The world was dark and loud, with the tracks close by and a freight train passing, eighty cars or more.

He held her and worried how it all might end, as the world roared by too close. He counted the gaps between the boxcars defined by moonlight, by final twilight maybe. The number grew impossible until the last one passed, dragging the clatter and roar of it away beyond the hill.

Now he is alone in all this diffused, ambiguous light, with a dog’s collar in his pocket for comfort or for luck. And the sun – he thinks possibly – finally burning through.

Download On A Hill in PDF.

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On A Hill by Kyle Kimberlin
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

time shall surely reap

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Cole_Thomas_The_Garden_of_Eden_1828Click to Enlarge*

My mind is composting tonight; not enough vegetables to harvest just yet. I meant to stop by my parents’ house today and obtain some tomatoes – there are plenty and they look very good – but I forgot. This puts me in mind of a poem:

This is the Garden

This is the garden: colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.

This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured, as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

— e e cummings

Isn’t that amazing? Read it aloud to yourself. Go ahead, it’s worth it, trust me. I did. Read it aloud several times.

Cummings was a master of his art.  And not the least bit shy about tackling the greatest common divisors of human life. After all, that’s the poet’s job, as it is the literary writer’s in any genre. As Stegner put it:

I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer. [All The Little Live Things]

I’m saying we should not look away, those of us who choose to take the human condition as our reason for art. Nietzsche said when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you. And somebody said you should make the abyss blink first. I think that’s a motto of Twitter or something.

Actually, Nietzsche wrote, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” [Link]

Truer words were never writ. And Cummings has given us something like Heaven here in two stanzas; I couldn’t imagine it written more beautifully. But for me all this begs a question:

What is the abyss in life as we see it around us? I mean here, in the other world, where the slow deep trees may sleep, but fitfully for fear of our homuncular hammers and saws.

When I stare into the abyss, I see shoes. Old, worn, creased, dusty shoes. Ironing boards, cookie jars, jars of buttons and marbles. Old phone books with the numbers of the forgotten, scrawled on the covers in black ballpoint. I see dog collars, baseball gloves, oven mitts bearing the faces of animals as symbols of hope into the ever-retreating brave new world. I see the polished to glaring hell hallways of hospitals, peanut butter sandwiches and hummingbirds hovering before a rising sun.

How about you, fellow writer? What stares back at you, refusing to blink?

 

*Image: Thomas Cole The Garden of Eden,1828

that’s memory?

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If you asked me what my novel is going to be about, I’d probably give you a synopsis of the plot. But if you responded, quite rightly, “No, that’s what seems to happen. What’s it really about?” I’d say it’s about memory.

For years, I’ve been mulling over the idea of what memory is and how we hold it, and what there is in our lives and families that is common to the experience of memory. It’s a little like trying to get a grip on a very annoyed trout in a bucket of baby oil.

Now comes the novelist Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, trying to get his own fists on the fish. In this brief and thoughtful video, he does it quite eloquently.

plunge

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I’m trying to write a scene in which a boy runs down a dock and jumps into a pond. Rather, I’m writing a scene in which the middle-aged narrator tries to remember what that feels like. I can’t think of a good way to do first hand research – which would otherwise be the best thing – so I’m really trying to remember what that’s like. I don’t really want to write a scene in which said narrator tries to recall said experience and fails miserably.

What in the world is that feeling, exactly?

a conversation

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I was just sitting here, thinking about my big project, and wondering what it might be like to talk to a ghost. I don’t mean the way they do it in movies and those ghost hunting TV shows. I mean, what if you could have a normal conversation – no howling medium, ectoplasmic interference or spooky ethereal music – with someone who is dead.

I guess it depends on whether you believe in ghosts. My Dad and I were checking out his TV, which is acting up, and Ghost Hunters happened to be on. He asked me if they ever catch any ghosts. I said it depends on whether you accept their premises. He said no, it’s a yes or no question. I said baloney, it’s totally subjective; if you don’t believe that ghosts exist, it’s logically impossible to catch evidence of one. If you do … well, I guess you’ll need to ask someone who does, and who has watched the show.

I have watched the show, many times, but remain a profound skeptic. Sure, they present evidence of paranormal phenomena, and it’s fun. Makes for an hour of TV distinguishable from Law & Order and House. But even if we concede that their evidence is real and empirically sound, we’re still stuck.

Let’s say I believe in paranormal phenomena. ESP, telekinesis, etc. Which is more likely, that a camera or recorder caught an event in which the physical world was manipulated by a dead person’s spirit, or that those instruments were manipulated by the unconscious – maybe deliberate – psychic abilities of the “investigators?” I mean it seems reasonable to suppose that living people have greater paranormal powers than dead ones, at least in this world.

In my novel, my character Marty claims he and his house are haunted, but that he does not believe in ghosts. He says that he is haunted by memories, and that memories have life and reality and power beyond the limitations of his recollection. Memories abide, he says, a priori, apart from direct human experience and remembering. Thus it’s possible to be haunted by someone you never met, an event outside your own life. It is a twist on the old adage that someone doesn’t die so long as he is remembered. Marty says memory lives on, even if it is forgotten. The world remembers, love remembers, in spite of us who still live. And in that way, we don’t die.

Now, if I could just get Marty’s memories to sit down with him for a cup of joe and a chat about orchard-keeping, we’ve got ourselves a story.

deadhead

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Remember when I went up to visit my brother and go to hear The Dead? Did I mention we used to go to Grateful Dead shows pretty often? Well, we did. Here’s proof. That’s me, back in the day, in my tie dye. 1989? 1990? Who knows.

God knows what has become of the shirt; I guess it’s possible I have it in a box somewhere. The bandana I have for sure, and close to hand. My Tasha used to wear it sometimes, and now it’s lining a drawer in my dresser. The one where I keep my watches and keepsakes and stuff. Seems right enough.

Maybe you’re expecting some Dead lyrics to end the post. That’s something I would do, no doubt. So let’s not. I’m in the mood for a little Colin Hay, convinced as I am that it’s a beautiful world

And still this emptiness persists
Perhaps this is as good as it gets
When you’ve given up the drink and those nasty cigarettes
Now I leave the party early at least with no regrets
I watch the sun as it comes up
I watch it as it sets
Yeah this is as good as it gets.

– Colin Hay

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Love Dogs

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An inquiry into ontology or just a letter to my dog on the anniversary of her passing.

“A peace above all earthly dignities,
a still and quiet conscience”

To Tasha
(August 1990 – August 12, 2005)
at the Rainbow Bridge

Dear Tash,

I miss you, old friend. It’s one of those summer nights, like those last few nights of your short and beautiful life. Do you remember the way it would get warmer in the late evening, before bedtime, after the breeze from the ocean died down? You’d expect the evening to cool, but it doesn’t seem to. It’s the kind of night that makes a little dog itchy. You had some itchy summers in this dank valley with its blanket of sour sea air, didn’t you? I’m sorry for that. The pills weren’t really so much help.

Happy is happy with us here, but you know that ’cause she’s not there. She’s doing fine. You loved her very much, so you’d want to know. She takes a lot of medicine, but she’s OK. The Santa Barbara itch is bad this year. We’ve kept her free of fleas, but there is that something in the air again, that bothers all the dogs. She’s getting lots of baths, since she can’t take the pills.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, about the meaning of life. I told him I didn’t think the question “What is the meaning of life?” makes sense. Because meaning and life are two different kinds of things. Like the sound of blue. Life just is – it’s an abstraction with a different answer for every life that’s ever lived, and there’s no way to know what it meant until you get to the end and look back.

A better question is to ask “What does a life mean?” And even then, the answer has to be, “it depends.” Which life? And what do you mean by mean? I guess in this context – meaning life – we’re asking to know its importance, it’s value.

So life doesn’t mean anything until it’s lived, just as music doesn’t mean anything until it’s played, like a toy under the sofa isn’t the same as playing with it. And a leash on the peg in the hall by the door isn’t the same as a walk in the sun. Living is as living does, am I right?

Since this is a letter to you — meant to be mailed by some far fetched intentions of love through the veil into Heaven — maybe you’re expecting me to try to assess the value of your life. No, little friend. I can only tell you that my heart has not been unbroken since the moment when I touched your face as the doctor took your life. I have not turned my mind from that time and place, not for three years. And I guess I never will. Maybe I’m getting used to it, but I gave up hope of getting over it. You understand. At the same time, I have so many happy memories. I thank God for the brief, amazing gift of you.

No, if I have a life to sum the meanings of, it’s mine. I admit I’m one of those guys who keeps assuming the need before the necessary end. Then I can only hope that as you lie with the others in the shade of the trees across the creek, you see me walking through this other world of turning time and think my living has improved. Maybe you wish I had been like this — a little more well in my body, in the world where bodies matter — back then, when you were here to walk with me. I know you understand.

I miss you, little friend. I wish we could start over. And if there’s any consolation, maybe it’s that time is always speeding up. The world is spinning in greased grooves, faster and faster, and every precious dizzy turn brings us closer to the day. Which is maybe tonight or maybe forty years, which is the same difference.

Now it’s midnight, and starting to cool off again. I should go to bed and say my prayers and get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow is another day. Or not, because nobody has promised tomorrow to me. But if it comes, and if the pale indifferent sun glows scattered through the morning’s vapor on the sea, thank God. I can go visit Happy and take her for a bath and a walk, and try to be a better friend to her than I was to you, and a better man walking on the good earth, trying not to stoop from his petty and fleeting concerns. And that, my fuzzy little well-remembered pal, is the meaning of a life.

DOG SONG

for Rascal

My song begins at sundown
when the twilight wind comes up.
A cold wind, brushing
my hair and my tail.

Butterfly light is shining.
Butterflies lift me at nightfall,
and nothing hurts me now.
Look, the light is brighter than …

See the little dogs come running!
See the bigger dogs come running!
See the kitties and dogs come together,
and all the animals singing.

by Tasha
January 2004
based on a Pima Indian song

* * *

There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

— Rumi

beware the ides

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The Ides of March have come round again and it’s windy in my little town, as it should be.

I’ve been trying to concoct some generalized meaning for us to take from the otherwise unportending day of almost spring. But all that’s coming to mind, in a literary vein, is a memory of high school. I believe our English class put on scenes of Julius Caesar, with white bedsheets for togas.

I wish I had pictures of that. No doubt we were cute as hell.

The lines of that play which have stuck most clearly in my mind are these I encountered in College:

CASSIUS.
Then, if we lose this battle,
You are contented to be led in triumph
Thorough the streets of Rome?

BRUTUS.
No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman,
That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;
He bears too great a mind. But this same day
Must end that work the Ides of March begun;
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius!
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why, then this parting was well made.

Those last two lines especially have stayed with me. About 15 years ago, I quoted or paraphrased them to a friend of mine. That was the last time I saw my friend in this world; he died on St. Patrick’s Day 1994, at 30 years of age. He has been missed.

Of course, there was no cause and effect involved. I’m just sayin’ be careful quoting Shakespeare.

Anyway, it is almost Spring, so here’s some poetry from e.e. cummings. And if we do meet … oh never mind.

In Just —

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

e.e. cummings