Good morning, Hank.

It's Tuesday, March 26th, 2013, also known as spring. You know, spring..."When daisies pied, and violets blue, / And lady-smocks all silver-white..." (William Shakespeare, from Love's Labour's Lost)

Spring, "Thou with dewy locks, who lookest down / Through the clear windows of the morning..." (William Blake, To Spring)

Spring, which is like a woman who says, “O yes, I’m here again and your heart / knows I was coming.” (Carl Sandburg, Three Spring Notations on Bipeds)

Spring, when "...hope of man as well / Flowers among the morning dews..." (A. E. Housman, Spring Morning)

"A light exists in spring," Emily Dickinson wrote, "Not present on the year / At any other period." Where is this light, Emily Dickinson? Is it down there with the snow? Is it up there in the grey sky of doom? Because that looks exactly like the winter light!

Hank, when the Yeti and I first moved to Indianapolis, we dropped off the moving van at the U-Haul place, and the guy was like, "Welcome to Indianapolis!"

And I said, "How long have you lived here?" And he said, "Oh, about 30 years." And I said, "Well, what do you think of it?" And after a second, he said, "Well, you gotta live somewhere." I think that's probably how a lot of people feel about their hometowns, but I've really come to love Indianapolis, even in... the spring snow.

It's an unpretentious city of hidden beauty, which is by far my favorite kind of beauty, and it's lovely, even in winter. But I am ready, Hank, I am ready for spring. Hank, the calendar has made me a promise that outside has failed to keep, stupid outside, always ruining everything.

So Hank, I don't actually believe that magical thinking works or anything, but I thought for today's video I would share my favorite poem about spring in the hopes that like spring will like happen.

I also love this poem because it reminds us that poetry is partly in the business of getting us to try to pay attention. It's by e. e. cummings.

"O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee,
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)"

You gotta live somewhere, Hank, but you also get to live to somewhere. So brace yourself, my friends, spring is coming.

Hank, I'll you on Friday.