Monday, June 22, 2015

"How Can I Keep from Singing?"

Sitting in a corner on the porch this afternoon, I was invisible witness to the arrival of the mail-delivery. Our local mail-woman, if that's a term, arrived at about 3:30 as she usually does. The street was empty of cars and pedestrians as far as I could see from my secluded perch. I heard her open the mail box, place the mail and close the box back up though I could not see her. But I could also hear something else: All by herself, alone in the universe of our neighborhood, she was singing.

How long has it been since I witnessed such a thing? I don't know. I suppose it's not important in the great scheme of things, but I found it somehow intimate -- almost secret -- and lovely in the small universe that is our street. It wiped me out. A delicious little gift ... plain as salt ... clear as brook water ... singing where no one else needed to or could possibly know. Perfect. Perfectly perfect.

It was like feeling a green grape explode in the mouth when biting down ... ker-blam! -- taste and texture everywhere; nothing else but juicy, delicious flavor.

I never did recognize the tune, but it sent me associatively to the Pete Seeger version (my favorite) of "How Can I Keep From Singing."


1 comment:

  1. I find the cattle are interested in my singing. But they're just a good audience generally, appreciative i'd say. When Gracie was 3 she used to sing and dance for them. Many will say they're just curious and accustomed to vocalized dinner calls, but dairies play Mozart during milking time, and Felisha insists she knew of an old brown swiss who wouldn't assent to being milked unless they put Johnny Horton's Battle of New Orleans on the phonograph. That may not speak to an elevated sense of taste, but we all have old favorites. Soothes the savage breast according to Congreve.


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