A Meditation on Mud (by Laura Orem)

This time of year, I'm preoccupied with mud. It hasn't gotten cold enough to really freeze the ground, but all the greenery is long gone. So, adding in animals with hooves, what you end up with is large quantities of mud. You sink in it up to your ankles in the pasture; it tracks all over; it's embedded in the cracks in the sidewalk; and I spend a lot of time picking it out of Black Jack's hooves. (It also makes it very difficult to pick up the poop, but let's stick to the matter at hand.)

Black Jack in the mud. He tramps around in quite happily. He also likes to roll in it - don't ask me why.

If it would snow, at least it would be pretty, but right now, life on the farm is lacking much aesthetic quality. It's the price we pay for springtime.

Speaking of springtime, I tried to find an appropriate muddy-winter poem to accompany this post, but I couldn't. There are lots of poems about mud, but they all seem to be placed in the spring and summer. Mud in warm weather has an entirely different feel than winter mud. No one is ever tempted to squish his bare toes in winter mud.

A famous poem that references springtime mud is e.e. cummings' "Chansons Innocents: I."  Now, I have a problem with most interpretations of this poem. Over and over again, I've seen explications of how this piece is a lovely evocation of the innocence of childhood. Well, yeah, but --- this poem creeps me out big time. It's that goat-footed balloonman. Where is he luring those kids? Some say the goat feet make him faunlike; I'm thinking demonic. And that "far and wee" - it's eerie. Where is he going?

"Chansons Innocentes: I"
by  e.e. cummings
in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it's spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee

Am I the only one who finds this profoundly disturbing, even with the wonderful "mud-/luscious"? Maybe I'm just reflecting back my winter mood, but I don't think so. It gives me the willies.

Anyway, there isn't much to do about the mud, except throw down some straw and wait for a freeze. In the meantime, Black Jack is having a good time, and if that balloonman shows up, I told Black Jack to give him a good kick.