JOY ALONG THE WAY: JUNE'S FANCIES AND FANTASIES

The sun is at mid-morning which means that the big dappled shade doily cast by the oak lies squarely across the back walk as if some perfectionist could not bear to have it off center. One can see squirrel shadows on the ground as the furry friskies leap high above in the shiny leaves.

I sit in an old favorite chair in a patch of white Dutch clover. The blossoms are big as Lilliputian tennis balls. Bees fly from blossom to blossom, so free, so happy, so busy. Daily manna is spread before them.

Two young doves have come off the nest. They have inherited the ability to take life leisurely. The parents stroll, pink-footed, down the walkway, aimlessly looking for edible crumbs. The young ones sit a little aside, watching, learning. No hurry.

The weedy flower border (I've been a bit creaky this spring) still puts on a brave show. The big hollyhock leaves spread over the everlasting creeping henbit, or whatever it is, hiding it fairly well. The tiger lilies say to whatever is nibbling at their feet, "Watch out, or I'll eat you alive." The big clumps of yellow daisies nudge aside as best they can the assorted grasses that don't belong there. Or do they? Who's to say? The soil, rain and sunshine have open-door policies.

I haven't seen any of old Mr. Toad's descendants this season. Stripe, the garter snake, got killed, flat as a snake-cake in the street last summer, evidently without leaving progeny. Mr. Tortoise is alive and well, making seams in the grassy yard, about three inches a minute.

When everything seems in place, I rap the chair arm with a long-stemmed clover blossom and say, sotto-voiced, "This meeting will come to order."

Through squinted, poetically licensed eyes, I look around the clover patch to see if a quorum is present. It is a June meeting of the Ghostly Poets Society.

There is J.R. Lowell with his ear to the ground as if listening for something. Helen Jackson, J.G. Whittier and J.W. Riley sit nearby. S. T. Coleridge ambles in slowly and sits on the periphery of the irregular semi-circle. He seems a little bleary-eyes. Is it the opium or is it the languorous ambiance of the sun-warmed clover?

"What did you have to say about June, Sam?" asks J.G.

Sam does not readily reply, so Helen supplies the answer, "He called June the leafy month."

I look about at all the trees and shrubs I can see. Would 100,000,000 leaves be reasonable? Coleridge's adjective seems so right. He bestirs himself and acknowledges appreciation of Helen's memory by saying, "And you praised the skies and clouds of June and flowers of June together."

J.W. Riley lies back in the clover and maneuvers himself into the dappled shade of the doily, the place he wants to be when we're knee-deep in June, "Jes' a-sort o' lazin' there -- s'lazy, 'at you peek and peer through the wavin' leaves above, like a feller 'at's in love and don't know it, ner don't keer!"

A brief silence, then Jimmy Lowell, as if he has heard something with his ear to the ground, sums it all up, "And what is so rare as a day in June . . . whether we look or whether we listen, we hear life murmur, or see it glisten . . . ."

Two blue jays, "dressed in them baseball clothes" and without the gift of poetically licensed eyes, scream from the oak tree, adjourning the meeting without benefit of my clover blossom rap on the chair arm.

REJOICE!!!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.