Ah-Ha—Tra-La! It’s May

photo: Amber Capron

On a beautiful May day, I sat on a bistro patio with a longtime friend and her dad. Something seemed amiss. Always attentive in conversation, Jean closely watched comings and goings, table seatings, servers with trays. She looked more focused than distracted, casing the place. “Is someone joining us,” I wondered aloud. “Without even realizing it, I’ve accepted that I might die in a public shooting,” she calmly replied. Gulp. Swig.

Days later, she continued. “A few years ago I took an active-shooter defense class, despite my intense skepticism of all things firearm. I don’t dwell on the possibility of dying in a public shooting or even particularly worry about it, but it’s taken root in my universe of possibilities. Should this happen, I hope my family and friends share gruesome images of my remains. The media sanitizes our experience of gun violence so we accept it. I believe that if we saw how high-velocity ammunition shreds flesh, how it can render a body unrecognizable as human, even the staunchest of the anti-gun control among us could demand a cultural shift.”

Gulp. Yes. A new, unbelievable reality for me, like Jean I occasionally cast a subconscious leery eye. Fearless to the point of foolish all my life, I re-route my walk away from the truck with loaded gun racks cruising the park. As unhinging as it is at the outset to talk about gun violence, verbalizing it lightens the burden every aware person carries. Librarians studying an active shooter exit strategy, ticket-holders forgoing the concert, car dealers listening to threats from insolvent customers . . . expressing worries fosters camaraderie and perhaps activism.

Gun madness hovers, too pervasive and deadly, to ignore. How can gun deaths be too horrid to see but not too horrid to prevent? Stupid. Gun control activism grows fast, especially among the young, throughout the country. Smart. Strong-willed sanity will suck thoughts of gun violence from our psyches.

Now, pivoting to riveting, hat doffs to two people with great ground games. Plus, bottom-of-the-heart thanks to bluebirds and snails.

How about Donna Deegan’s upset mayoral win in Jacksonville, Florida? Deegan’s campaign, ever-focused on an inclusive message rather than monetary contributions, relied on door knocking, town halls, and community gatherings. “As much as I wanted to win this race for the people of Jacksonville, I wanted love to win.” Long a part of the Jacksonville community as a news anchor, Deegan’s “Donna Foundation” reaches underserved women dealing, as Deegan has three times, with breast cancer. My Jax friends mark their calendars for her run/walk fundraising events and send jolly finish-line photographs.

Twenty-two times a Grand Slam champion, Rafael Nadal gifts the game of tennis with a kind of sportsmanship, grit, and humility all his own. (Also, Nadal has given Spain a terrific all-purpose tennis academy.) That he has won the French Open 14 times surpasses, I think, any tennis achievement. His all-out. grueling style of play causing chronic injuries, he announced this week that a severe hip injury necessitates many months of inactivity. Now he sets his sights on making 2024 his last year, competing in the four grand slams, all of which he’s won multiple times. “I don’t deserve to end my career like this, in a press conference.” Speaking about the upcoming French Open, he said that this year there will be a winner again “and it is not going to be me. And that is life.” Champ talk.

“There’s a bluebird in my heart” wanting to get out, but toughened Charles Bukowski mostly hides his constant companion. The gruff poet, however, never forgets his “Bluebird.” His love for the bird, their “secret pact,” could make him weep. He releases the bird and his own heart “at night sometimes / when everyone’s asleep.”

Paul McCartney and Wings frees any “Bluebird.” Soaring over the sea, trilling in midnight’s air, bluebirds know love’s power. Welcome a bluebird, “flying through your door—yeah, yeah, yeah—and you’ll know what love is for.” How convincing and uplifting, the voices and instruments of Band on the Run, every delicious “ah, ha.” Whenever I see one, I believe Sir Paul: “We’re the bluebirds, we’re the bluebirds.” Ah, ha.

photo: Henry Jaquith

Leaves, bees, fish, and butterflies lean into-on-across each other, making one interwoven tapestry. Holding nothing back, “In the Month of May” poet Robert Bly senses his love expanding. Wisely he embraces his relationship’s natural changes, and he therefore expects ongoing miracles. “Along the roads, I see so many places / I would like us to spend the night.”

Snails kiss on leaf-back, settling on their place to spend the night. Sierra Boggess and her orchestral companions fall in love with “the darling month of yes you may.” Ah-ha—tra-la, it’s “The Lusty Month of May.” Blissful and libelous. Astray and amorous. Tra-la—Ah-ha.

Snails smooch, bluebirds perch

skipping maypole dancers weave

May, why yes you may

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