These June Days

On June days like the ones we’re in, now the birds begin talking before 5:00 even. Today I heard them tuning up a good twenty minutes before the old clock had even struck 4:00 down in the living room. And even at 9:30 last night bands of daylight still clung to the horizon.Every year at this time I feel like I’m walking around inside one of those 1940s children’s book you can still find in second-hand stores, with the perfectly puffed clouds set against skies of heavenly blue.I look around and think Where are Grandpa and Grandpa who the children visit on their farm? Where is the littlest child with her doll carriage eternally trying to dress the cat in baby clothes?Every year at this time I feel like I'm back in Eden, that state that all of us seem to dimly remember, before we and the world tilted into brokenness and error.It seems we inhabit a sort of continual Present tense on any June morning with its blossoms and its birds. There is no future to fear, no past to either regret or pine for.Maybe it’s the color of the grass, or the proliferation of blossoms everywhere. You’re not expecting all these blooms somehow. I know I’m newly amazed every year all the plants that go to the trouble of flowering, even the small humble one that you picture at the bottom of the ladder, that plant whose mission you thought was to clutch soil merely; even this plant is staging a great show of beauty. It reminds me of the bike parades you went to as a kid, your dented little Schwinn festooned in flounce and sparkle.The world is so festooned right now. Just walk outside and see.