Robert Frost has such a folksy invitation placed at the beginning of his book of poems. It reads, "I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may). I shan't be gone long. You come too."

Come along with me while I tell you about another spring in case you didn't pay attention the first time. It is a wet-weather spring that Lou and I cleaned out every year when we lived nearby so that the water could run happily and splashingly down the hillside. It was, and still is, up Gilman's Hill a little way. You cross a creek to get to it and climb up through Ozark underbrush of huckleberry, buck brush and assorted other low growth struggling for survival beneath the big oaks, sour gums and cedars.

We had the location eye-marked by a big sycamore that grew on the creek bank. Aligning ourselves with it, east to west, we could part the fiddlehead ferns, wild bleeding-hearts and find it every time. Like Frost's spring it would be choked with fallen leaves and twigs and would appear to be only a damp spot on the hillside floor.

We worked slowly, picking out a handful of leaves at a time then waiting to see if the water would come bubbling up. Who wanted to work fast on a dazzling June day when a wood thrush was singing nearby and a woodpecker was hammering away somewhere of in the far woods. Days and days stretched out before us.

In due time we got down to the chert pebbles and up bubbled the freed water, clean and clear. We renewed the little channel that led down to the creek and the little stream of water was soon making its way to the sea, via the creek, the St. Francis River, the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes we picked a bleeding-heart blossom, tossed it on the water and wondered if it ever made it to New Orleans.

Wet-weather springs run only in wet weather when the usual waterways inside the earth get too crowded and push the water to whatever opening can be found. They are similar to a safety valve on a pressure cooker. A lot cooler though!

Sometimes things get too crowded inside humans too. Emotions swell to the breaking point. We begin to wonder if we can deal with them. We see disaster looming in dark corners. "Boogies" in the brain boggle our minds. But I feel that we have safety devices too. We just need to identify them and go about cleaning them out as Robert Frost, Lou and I did the springs.

One such safety device is described by another poet, W.H. Davies, who invited us to stop, to stand and stare. "What is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?" he asks. And then declares, "A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare, no time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows."

Davies must have had some country experience to know how sheep and cows can "stare as long as sheep or cows."

I know a country road where I can stop and, if I'm lucky, some cows will come over to the fence and stare at me. I stare back, noting their long eyelashes, of which I'm envious, the neat part of their hair down the middle of their faces, their moist noses. I break off a piece of fleabane on my side of the fence and offer it to the one nearest at hand. "No thank you," it seems to say, taking a step backward, I note the green pasture behind it, the placid pond reflecting a blue sky and I don't wonder that it is satisfied with what it has.

At home I stand and stare at the blue larkspur rising up amongst the red hollyhocks that have surpassed the height of the bird feeder they surround. I've retired this feeder for the summer, but a cardinal or blue jay still comes to sit on top and, like me, stare at the forest of flowers overtaking their old feeding tray. The bumblebees come too, fat old fellows living off the bounty of the land.

It is hard to stay uptight about anything when all this gladness of nature surrounds you on every side.

REJOICE!