Population Drifts

NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in them and her hands were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb.

She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones and prowled in the garbage cans.

One child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids and can neither talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory

And as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown:

They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion.

--Sandburg

"Is there not a little hop in your step that was missing a few weeks ago?"

I had this great come back and god told me to forget it.

In the tundra, spring is awesome. The ice and snow recedes. One day at a time. It is rainy all week here but just before that the sun was out. Miraculous. Really.

My springtime is Cummings!!

because it's

Spring
thingS

dare to do people

(& not
the other way

round)because it

's A
pril

Lives lead their own

persons(in
stead

of everybodyelse's)but

what's wholly
marvellous my

Darling

is that you &
i are more than you

& i(be

ca
us

e It's we)

It's guess, ok? 50,no lower,40LOWER!20then?, ok close, is5
degrees, just out............. thair.
Thickness of the |windo|+ice
My gate icedshut and then twisdet in my hand when i YANKED it
by the face(sorryoldgatei'llbe backtofixyou)(latr)
then hurtmy feet from kikkiCKKg it(saidiwassory.)
(ok?)
a.m saw 4" of NEW (coldly improvED trophy) snoOhOh
OH
on my left footpath right on top of the 2" of born-last November-ice.
Leaving me gray, stillstuck
in this Smoekfild cave,
the dismal scientists 00O that's a gem a gift a lark&a larf that
"sciens" (whut jokers, i LOL but quietlee)
n them droningdronningdrowning me
and my mind, HALP(little help here.)pleese)
waiting for my economist to come.

apologies 2, waiting 4, and here h ee cummings -

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
sucess than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush your pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually commitings
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
lifer in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
always making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you

;-)

... A wasted youth is better by far
than a wise and productive old age.

... if the thrill is gone then it's time to take it back.

... I like my music like I like my life - everything louder than everything else.

Meatloaf

PS - The Romance of Economics? Hope springs eternal.

Lots of economic romance going around. Prices dropping right down into one's lap.

And now for the alternative view ---

On Spring:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

And on the death of a child from our friend W. Wordsworth:

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.