Getting into April's drama

April is a stage play with many acts. The props and characters change with every shower. Just when you think you have discovered the main characters and the story line for the present act, along comes the silvery, slanting rain which, like a misty veil, obliterates the current scene. It lasts just long enough for the producer to get all the new things in place for the next act.

I was watching a dazzling cardinal air-staking the boundaries of his territory for his summer habitation and, at the same time, playing a mathematical wizard. I decided that if he took the same flight pattern from the feeder to the picket fence to the forsythia to the mock orange shrub a half dozen times, that might be the region he was claiming. I had counted up to three identical flights and was thinking of sending the result of my study to some prestigious bird publisher when here came the rain again, washing out the patches of purple violets I could see dotting the yard and the eye-corner vision of the old gray cat idling down the walkway.

In less than an hour the rain was over and gone. Blue skies. Sunshine. The grass a shade greener and buttoned down with dandelions. The cardinal was gone. Two doves sat side by side on the light wire. Hark! The flicker is back, happily hammering away at some neighbor's gutter or one of my wooden bird houses where he thinks the opening hole isn't big enough.

I haven't heard the spring peepers yet. The nearby, rock-lined LaCroix Creek is forcing them farther upstream to spend their winters in the muddy banks. And, alas, so far, no purple martins are chortling around their old homeplace. I suppose their house needs to be moved or a big nearby limb of the big oak needs to be sawed off. When martins come swiftly sailing into their house they don't appreciate having to navigate hurdles.

If the rains come and goes all night long I feel I've missed several acts of April's play. At dusk the Bradford Pear tree is just a dark green etching against the darkening sky. After a night of intermittent showers, there it stands in the morning sun, a bride trying on her wedding clothes, trembling with excitement for the opening act.

Witness enough of April's kaleidoscopic acts and I seem to want to be more involved, be reassured that I am a player, one with the robin's song, the silvery rain, the old gray cat, the Park carpets of nodding windflowers.

To play one's part well, he must be pliable, willing to be molded and shaped by the same forces that shape the flower, directs the wind, tunes the mockingbird.

I feel this out-of-myselfness after a spring shower and the sun has come out to dry things. I go out to sit on the stage of the present moment and note the symbols of resurrection. I pass by the hollowed-out stump of the old lightning-struck wild cherry tree and stoop to see what is coming up there. Each year it is different. Last year there were half a dozen maple seedlings. The year before that it was a perfectly healthy and beautiful sweet William. This year I saw Old Toad peeping at me, his head barely above ground.

All this gives a sense of continuity -- the same stage, the same players, yet everything new. Even I, as well as everyone else, am new every passing moment. Give me the patience of the doves, the cheerfulness of the goldfinch, the toughness of the grass, the beauty of the pear blossoms, whether I'm a bit player or a main character, I'll be strengthened to play my part well.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.