Such a Sunday

In the wake of Friday’s thunderstorms, the air has turned sweetly cool, dry, and stirred by breeze.  The trees thus nourished  have never been more thickly or more greenly leaved; they swish their raiment with glamorous abandon, whenever the wind lifts their skirts and sets them fluttering, tossing their locks like Lorelei.  White petals drift aloft, and butterflies.

On the deck, the sunlight is dappled.  From abroad comes the laughter of children frolicking in the gardens;  the squeak of a perching squirrel;  and the sweet pulsing notes of a scarlet-cloaked cardinal (perched right above me  in the upper reaches of an oak), serenading in search of a ladylove.  His persistent call  is  in time  rewarded, by an answering aria  from the neighboring woods  (I’d wed you, big guy, were I a lass of thine own kind).  And blessedly, improbably absent from this natural symphony, on this the Lord’s day, set aside and sanctified  for rest and contemplation:  the throaty roar and petrol stench of powermowers.  Most of us took care of that task yesterday, and the rest just wisely decided, Aww, let the green grass grow.

Over the past few months, I’ve been going in to work on weekends -- serving the mission, “Saving American Lives”.  But today, durn it, I figured it was high time to live an American life.   For it is this, just such as this, that is worth saving.