E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

What a week. Champagne at the Ritz for Britain's top poets. Now the daffodils are out, the sun is beaming, and the clocks spring forward. It is officially British Summer Time! Break out the barbecues! Don the wetsuits, swim the ice-cold seas, and prepare for Andy Murray to lose in the finals of Wimbledon, after Gordon Brown loses in May. Better still, who can wait to line their hamster cages with all those Summer Reading Lists, compiled by the friends-of-writers? Of course, it isn't all grim - with all the rain will come rainbows. And the grass will grow greenly, pleasantly. And the sand castles will be knocked down only to be rebuilt. Soon, back to school, leaves falling, and snow on the line, grinding Christmas shoppers to a halt. 2011, and a new Eliot winner. The cycle of life!

To my mind - and many poetry lovers - Spring means ee cummings and his disturbing-delightful poem of piracies, puddles, and the goatfooted balloonman. Here's a version - the least eccentric of the amateur versions I've located online. My mother used to read this to me when I was very young, and I can't help but admit it contributed mightily to my poetry urge. In St. Lambert, where I grew up, the Spring Equinox meant ice breaking up on the great St. Lawrence seaway, and very dramatic floods as foot-high snowbanks melted, as giant icicles plummeted, deadly as daggers, and the sunsets were a brilliant blue-into-vermilion-into-black. The air was so fresh and clean, and I'd run with my huskey dog, Rascal , and write poems in my head. This equinox is equally moving to me. It's been just over half a year since I entered the worst of my private darkness, and I feel a coming out into light, out of the mind's inner-winter. Hope springs eternal. Sometimes, it actually arr...