When I am in Charge

When I am in charge, spring and summer mornings will be cool and quiet. We will look out to discover the shadowy remains of a light rain still puddling the earth. Flowers will unfurl as the sun rises, and bees and hummingbirds will begin their work. The rest of us shall come slowly awake to a dulcet symphony of birdsong and breeze.


When I am in charge, fall days will be crisp and bright. Beams of sunshine will slant through leaves of red and gold and purple and brown. They will dazzle the eyes of all who stop to stare in wonder.

Everyone will stop to stare in wonder.


When I am in charge, children will hurry eagerly to school, their tummies warm with breakfast, their little shoes crunching through ripples of fallen leaves. They will pause in their journey to laugh and point as a pair of squirrels spiral up the trunk of an old oak, chattering and scolding each other, leaping like monkeys from bough to bough.

The children will gather a small pile of acorns, and leave it at the foot of the tree. They will leap like monkeys the last few blocks to school.


When I am in charge, winter snowfamilies will adorn every front yard. The top-hat-and-corncob-pipe snowpeople will live next door to the hijab and turban snowpeople who wave across the street to the yarmulke-wearing snowman whose wife is just sitting down to coffee with the sculptors of a beautiful pair of rainbow-shawled snow-women so they can watch from the window as their children race flexible flyers down the sparkling street.

Scarves and mittens flash in a tumult the color of laughter against the backdrop of a gray-scale day.


When I am in charge, we will all take a page from Whitman. We shall begin and end our days conscious of our power to contribute and achieve. We will rise in the quiet calm of confidence, sing what we know best through the course of the day, and lie down again at night with a sigh of satisfaction. We will rest soundly in the knowledge that we have sung our part well, and that the parts beyond our range have been sung also.

Soft echoes of the chorus will reverberate harmoniously in the velvety blackness of the night.

And we shall sleep.