"in Just-" begins with a beginning: the very first days of spring, when the snow has melted but the flowers haven't come out yet. This free verse poem uses not just its sounds, but its shape on the page to describe what that feels like.
Take a look at the enjambments and spacing in the poem's first few lines, for instance:
- The break right in the middle of the compound word "Just-spring" invites readers to stretch that "just" out: it's juuuuust spring, just the very tippy-top of the season.
- Then, a big space in the middle of the line (between "spring" and "when") creates a calm pause, as if the poem itself is pausing to look around at the springtime landscape.
- Another enjambment draws out the "mud" of "mud-luscious," making all that glorious squelchy mess sound even more delicious.
And even as the poem plays these visual tricks, the thick /uh/ assonance of "mud-luscious" means readers can almost feel the rich, lumpy mud. In just a few words, the poem has evoked both the spring itself and the pure pleasure of taking a big lungful of scented, earthy air as the ground finally peeks out from beneath the snow.
Unlike a lot of poems set in the springtime, this one won't look at the full-blown season of daffodils and cherry blossoms. This isn't a blooming landscape, but one about to bloom: it's full of messy, muddy, delectable potential.
And it's also the home of a peculiar figure. It's exactly at this brand-new time of year, the poem goes on, that a limping, whistling old balloon seller comes out. He's another sign of the season, like the mud puddles. But he also seems like something more than that.
Take another look at the language describing his whistle: the words "far and wee" play on the idiom "far and wide": when this old fellow whistles, the sound seems to travel everywhere. (Perhaps he himself wanders far afield, too!) And the onomatopoeic word "wee" lets readers hear that whistle. Besides sounding like a whistle noise itself, the word "wee" means "little."
The balloonman's whistle, in other words, is just a teeny-tiny, high, thin little sound—but it seems to travel everywhere, almost magically. Keep an eye out for this balloonman: it won't be the last time he appears.