May is a month of song.
The bees are buzzing, the spring peepers are peeping, and the children are singing their little songs. Our own home is filled with the classics lately: Old MacDonald, Twinkle Twinkle, Ba Ba Black sheep, and more. It is remarkable how children start singing more this time of year. Perhaps they sense that school is nearly out, or perhaps they are empowered by the good golden sun. Likely though, the children are simply more in tune with the seasonal changes than we adults. Unburdened by screens and bills and all our modern adult anxieties, they see the grass grow greener, feel the loam grow warmer, hear the birds chirp louder. The good green pattern emerges again and they see.
A few warm days following the April melt has brought the bees out of their hibernation in search of early blooms. They will find them in the riotous yellow in the fields, the yards, the forests: forsythia, daffodil, coltsfoot, trout lily, dandelion. Their song is a work song, a song of golden industry. Before John Henry or Haul Away, the bees sang the original work song; a deep droning hum. Established hives will be gathering their stores of honey for winter, new hives installed by eager novice bee keepers will be building out their brood chambers, their song a higher pitch, annoyed that they have been jostled into their new homes by untrained hands.
When night falls and the bees return to their hives which have been changed dramatically in only one short day, the spring peepers begin their own dusk-tone ballads. Walk along any field, road, or shore in the country and you will hear them belting out their love songs: thousands upon thousands of tiny male tree frogs calling out for romance. How could they not? May is a month for romance. It begins with May Day, a day steeped in notions of fertility since time immemorial. It continues with scores upon scores of flowers blooming, grass growing, and forest leaves unfurling. So many places for young lovers to hide from the prying eyes of their chaperones. Every living thing senses the coming ease of languid summer, of long June days, and is seeking someone to share them with.
Our own children may not have the words to articulate it, but they are keenly aware of the abundance of new life this season brings. They see the new birds arrive, the bees emerge, the animals slinking behind every hedgerow, every stone wall, and they know deep in their good little bones that this is the season of vitality, of health, of new life. They are wise, the children. Their eyes have not been clouded by a long life of sorrows and stresses. My own daughter ran out into the field yesterday barefoot and called out to me “Come on, Papa!” When I told her I just needed to put on my shoes she inquired “Why?” A good question to which I did not have a satisfactory answer. Then she ran off, singing another song about animals or the seasons or the sun. Wisdom manifest. Would that we all could be so carefree, that we could run barefoot through the fields, that we could sing. Perhaps we still have time to learn from these wise children and their good green songs.
Got me singing while I mow the lawn with this one
Spring is the childhood of the year, when every day brings new experiences, and song spills unselfconsciously forth for its own sake.