It was 41 degrees Fahrenheit when we got up this morning here in Chicago, but this weekend, the Memorial Day weekend, marks the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States.

Officially, it's still spring, though. Here is a poem by e. e. cummings that relates both to the season and to our topic here on Birth Story:

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)