This is my favorite stanza of Carl Sandburg's poem, titled here as "Spring."*
Each time I read it, I am a girl again and spring has come, along with a very particular morning:
Spring
Spring is when the grass turns green and glad.
Spring is when the new grass comes up and says "Hey, hey!
Hey, hey!"
Be dizzy now and turn your head upside down and see how
the world looks upside down.
Be dizzy now and turn a cartwheel, and see the good earth
through a cartwheel.
It prompted this poem of the first shoots of new grass.
This Morning
When I woke up, the sun was out!
Quickly! I put on my shorts and jersey.
Rushed down the back stairs to the kitchen, out the door—
and stood—the only one admiring my yard.
Grass shoots had started up—"Hurray," I shouted to our trees!
The dirt around the patio looked happy for company—my sneakers
and the new shoots!
Soon . . . thick grass will tickle my feet.
I'll do cartwheels, and somersaults—dizzy-making.
Lie on my back. Turning my head to watch bird flocks
until they disappear, listening until the sounds of their wings
fade. I'll puzzle out cloud shapes. . . .
I just might thank winter for snow.
For it watered the shoots.
It's Spring!
"Mom . . . Dad . . . come out!"
From Daybreak to Good Night: Poems for Children, where Sandburg’s poem about Spring can be found, is one of the few children's books that I brought to India. Periodically, I offer one of the poems or stories from these treasures to my Purely Prema readers. In my counseling years, I often used children’s books with clients, for on their pages truth is presented in a few words, with colorful illustrations expansively set out over a single or even a double page. I found it was impossible for clients not to be drawn in as participants in the stories, allowing them to be open to their meaning. Before each appointment, I'd reread the chosen one for my own pleasure as well as a reminder of what is right, of what matters in life.
My realization is, "To unbend the adult boundaries we hold, by entering into a child’s view through poems and stories, adults may deconstruct the boundaries that keep us from a new understanding of what is wrongly believed as true."
* Carl Sandburg, “Spring,” in From Daybreak to Good Night: Poems for Children (Toronto, ON: Annick Press Ltd. 2001), 11. "Lines Written for Gene Kelly to Dance To" ("Spring") originally published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, 1st ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2003), pp. 704-705.
* Carl August Sandburg (1878-1967) was an American poet, writer, and editor. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28362
* Carl Sandburg’s writings for children have been praised for their “inventiveness, whimsicality, and humor” with one reviewer adding that “Sandburg was writing for the children in himself … for the eternal child, who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense." https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/carl-sandburg
* Lynn Smith-Ary, artist and animation filmmaker of Montréal, Quebec, has received many film awards including a Genie for her short animation film entitled Pearl’s Diner. As a teenager, she wrote to Carl Sandburg and received a letter of encouragement in return. She attributes her inspiration to illustrate his collection of children’s poems years later to his kind response.
http://www.annickpress.com/author/Lynn_Smith_Ary