Thursday, March 30, 2006

interlude

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 from 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.

e.e.cummings

I found this poem the other day when I was surfing about looking
for something to give my Thursday Y4 kids for handwriting
practise (er...practice...which? I never know). I also spent some
time considering 'Lady Lazarus'; and decided it was perhaps not
quite
the right theme for 8 yr olds. In the end I settled on a
little ditty called 'Dimples' by Carol Ann Duffy, which bizarrely
I am unable to find a link to. Perhaps because it is so un Carol
Ann Duffy-ish.

Over the next few days I just found myself repeating the line
'Spring is like a perhaps hand'. I have this mental image of
a hand snaking up into a Georgian window box to move things about
surreptitiously, but then I wonder...what is a 'perhaps' hand?
Should the hand be invisible? Is the hand not there at all? What's
going on with all these people staring? Will there be daffodils?

In the meantime I wait for the trees on Knee Hill to burst into
leaf, and somehow it's all connected. Perhaps hand. Perhaps hand.
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