When I mentioned “the goat-footed balloon man”, my daughter gave me a quizzical look and said, “Whaaat?” Something she said made me think of him, though I can’t remember what it was now.
To explain, I looked up E.E. Cummings’s poem [in Just] and read it aloud. The childish innocence of this poem always makes me smile. Cummings captures the feeling of spring with impressionistic suggestions and splashes. The “mudlicious” and “puddle-wonderful” world he presents is a place we’ve lived in before, when we were kids. There’s something a little odd, even unsettling about the goat-footed balloon man, but we don’t understand why so we just keep spring-ing along. (Another benefit of innocence).
As we’re in the height of spring now, I hope you’ll read [in Just]. The smile is worth every one of the few seconds it takes to read this poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47247/in-just
A Wandering Minstrel 