Spring is sprung.
The grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdie is?
The bird is on the wing.
Now isn't that absurd?
I always thought the wing was on the bird!*
I have known the first three lines of this poem forever, or so it seems. It has been erroneously attributed to both e.e. Cummings and Ogden Nash, but “anonymous” is the “real” author. When I spontaneously say the first three lines now, I smile for its silliness—and also chuckle. However, when I say the last three lines, while I am still smiling, the chuckle is muffled, as if swallowed but still there, and I am in my inner depth. I am aware of my love for humorous truth.
The ditty reminds me of young girlhood and my teen years, when I was ready for spring after months of winter with cold temperatures, icy roads, and snow to shovel. Then one day . . . the first robin was pecking for worms under the grass. Spring had come.
Saying the poem, my voice swings through its rhythm and sounds. I enjoy the rhyming of riz/is, absurd/bird, spring/sprung, the z sound of is/isn’t/was, and finally, spring/wing. But the loveliest sounds of all are the sibilant s’s in “grass”—for they jog free the remembered feeling of new grass, so green, flattening under sneakers or offering its coolness under bare feet as it poked between my toes.
My realization is, “Living in openness to a poem of joy can bring a smile, a laugh, a shaking of the head for its tongue-in-cheek humor—even with its wrong spelling—that ends with a twist of truth.”
* www.answers.com/Q/What_is_complete_poem_spring_has_sprung_by_ee_cummings
* Ronald Heuninck, Rain or Shine (Edinburgh, UK: Floris Books, 2014). (By permission)