Woke up a bit better today. Well, I feel rotten, but the waterworks have stopped. For now.

I took off much of the afternoon yesterday to rest up for the debate last night, and on the way home E.E. Cummings was in my mind. I was driving past some of those white puffballs the city has planted in the medians along Assembly, and thinking to myself,

in Just-

spring …

when my head is puddle-wonderful…

And indeed, not only were my sinuses “mud-luscious,” to use another of his descriptions, but so was my brain. I was ready to slap “the goat-footed baloonMan” upside the head if he tried whistling far and wee around me…

But today my head feels more like a merely damp sandbag, and I’m not nearly as soggy in general. The drugs have taken hold, so I guess we’re near Barstow.

Further, today’s offering from Tom O’Bedlam, above, is another Cummings poem about spring, one I haven’t read before. And this version isn’t one they’d make you read in school, for while it celebrates the season, it is unromantic about it, dealing forthrightly with the goddess who is also a slattern, with “soggy legs,” a “muddy petticoat,” and an all-around “sloppy body.”

Now that spring I recognize, and unforgiving slattern though she may be, I suppose I wouldn’t have her otherwise.

By the way, I learned something new from “Tom’s” commentary — that E. E. Cummings didn’t necessarily want other people writing his name in lower case, and only occasionally did it himself.