The monsoon seems in retreat. A stressful week, yet this Friday evening Rick and I sat at the river table sipping a minty cocktail and saw a scarlet tanager flitting by (red more intense, far brighter, than any cardinal) and then a bald eagle swooping over the river. The cedar waxwings were rising in (take-your-turn) cloud waves from our Juneberry trees to sky and back again. Every now and then there was the swoosh of a Baltimore oriole, those sun-breasted birds. The late afternoon lay long tree shadows over the impossibly green new grass.
I remembered this perfect poem to mark the first day of June:
Today
by Billie Collins
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.