Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
At the end of April, clear skies, bright moon, and mild weather.
SPRANG AGAIN
(When asked to write 300 words to be included in a book of photographs of the wetlands of Lake Washington’s Arboretum, I recalled a line from the poet E.E. Cummings – “Wholly to be a fool while spring is in the air my heart approves.” The inventive language of the nonsense poems of Edward Lear seemed appropriate for the task of expressing something beyond rational thought. In this state of mind, the old man I am fast becoming took the child I will always be on an excursion into the marshes on a rainy morning – and wrote this:)
SUN-DAY MORE-NING IN THE LAND OF THE WETLY WET AND GREENLY GREEN, WITH A CHILD AND AN OLD APRIL FOOL:
Slickers and brellas and Wellies well on, smushed we into the deep foolish joy of Sprang coming fastly now in the jigglesome muckety muck where the Smiley-wily Things are. And found Smiley-wily Things indeed!
The upsplashing spears of highris splunching holes in the fairy air. The wallowing willy-pads. The coiling tails of the cats-to-be. Egglings hidden in the blunderbushes. Great globs of amfibbyous much-lucious grawling with imphant insects – the dandyprats, smiders, millypoodles, mini-frish, plumblebees, teeny-tiny crockojaws and the wonder-water wiggles.
Herd we the krill of the Great-Willed White Spork, the smuddy thud of the Stagnating Spoon, and the chortle of the blue-nosed Bibby Bird, crying “lunch-bucket, lunch-bucket.”
Smelled we the smelly Things coming in and going back, rising up and razing down as the merry-go-round of lively life spun merrily round. Felt we the slime, slurred we the ooze, and shrugged the sticky-wicky as it catched and clawed to hold us still. And all the while, all the while, The Wet came down, the Wet rose up, the Wet roused round and round making us all wildly wet. But cared not, we!
For we were green where grows the greening. Oh, there’s that green and that green and still another green and a greener green over there, and out there the green that’s greener than that, and the most prodijus green of all right here nearby. And we smunched some greens in our flingers and painted our noses and clothes and toes all green to go home green. And oh how we did that!
Home again, home again, wetly and greenly and lively were we. Yes, yes! Two trioophant twin captains of the explodition into the deeply foolish joy of Sprang, Sprang, SPRANG AGAIN!
PS: An aside to the publishing of this piece – it drove the spell-check mad – it had no sense of humor – and resulted in many clarifying emails from translators of other languages who had light hearts and got the jokey joy.