KEEPING YOUR HEAD DURING AN ELECTION YEAR

In a presidential election year the peccadillos of politicians are probed. The campaigner's stands on the economy are elucidated, on education exemplified. The campaigners' dreams for America will be dissected, their promises purloined.

Come November the electorate will be so brain-battered and bruised by all the hoopla, hope and hype, voters will stumble into the booths and breathe a sigh of relief no matter which way things go. Much money will be spent, much effort expended, and, no matter what, four more years will go by. Four years to watch and wait and clip snippets of behavior to be used in the next dizzying push and pull for the brass ring.

One's life could get skewed in such election years and he could get caught up in some quarrelsome region and miss the steady, beautiful flow of life. No matter who will be elected it will not change the sun's pull of the tulips up out of the ground, the germination of the seeds in the little peat pots, new babies, kittens, puppies, calves, lambs, etc. that will be born.

Of course he will keep that "ozone thing" in the back of his mind. He will spend or save what money he ha~s, noticing whether his supply is increasing or diminishing and buy this versus that in ratio to his income. Of course he will keep in back of his mind what he thinks will stabilize his currency, but meat loaf days can be just as exciting as steak days if he remembers the vast roll and swish and verdict of the majority is usually the way he wants things to go too. But if they don't, he knows he won't be shot or jailed at dawn.

He may not be able to put it into words, but he may think, America, sometimes you make right things wrong, and although slow sometimes, you usually make wrong things right.

A robin sings, tentatively, at dawn now. That's right. The daffodils have uncased their yellow trumpets and send their silent messages of gladsome spring into the air. That's right. Tiger lilies say, "Thumbs up" as they push their thick multiple green shoots above ground to see if the world is still here. All these things are right.

Men and women at the seed racks may exchange views of Bush, Buchanan, Tsongas and Clinton, but their real purpose for the moment is to choose radish, mustard, lettuce, spinach seeds. They know what these things will do. It takes no vote here to change the ways things work.

I am somewhat like the person (Walt Whitman) who listened to "the learned astronomer, heard his proof ... was shown the charts and diagrams ... to add, divide and measure ... became tired and wandered off by myself and ... looked up in perfect silence at the stars."

I wander off to see how my two new rose bushes are coming along, Paul's~ Scarlet and Queen Elizabeth. Isn't that a poetical lovely pair? They've grown up each side of my latticed garden seat where they will mingle at the top like two lost lovers who have, at long last, found each other.

I wander down to the far corner of the yard to see if the calacanthus shrub, cut back to the ground last year, is coming ~up. It is. Resurrection!

I wander even farther down to the creek (Cape LaCroix) as it flows under the Troll bridge, see some missing boards in the bridge floor, see in the distance, along the creek's current, the wide, sloping rock-walled banks as the flood control project takes shape, coming closer and closer. I want to call someone to ask if these rock-walled banks are coming up to the little arching Troll bridge, and if so, what will become of the Troll! Then I think, oh, just wait and see. That's what I'll do about the election. Of course I'll vote, but in the meantime I will not get caught up in a noisy world where I can't hear the robin at dawn or the katydid at night.

REJOICE!