Despite his best efforts, President Donald J. Trump was unable to blot out the sun today.
Even his vaunted Space Force, upon its activation several millennia from now -- when Trump is 3072 years old and his hair, still orange, has grown to encompass the entire continent of North Putinia and various outlying mudflats -- even that majestic force of half-starved robots, bastard sons of Elon Musk, will be but a speck in an atom of a mote in the eye of the smiling Orb of Heat and Life around which our planet, Ivankania, has revolved since time untold.
No, today in Massachusetts the clouds blotted out the sun without the least presidential assistance. And a gentle rain poured down upon trees, bushes, farmland, grasses and weeds alike, refreshing the Earth (we still call it that) after what was the most beautiful, blossoming spring in recent memory. The displaced winds of the melting Arctic have turned our state into a sanctuary of cool breezes. Your experience in Arizona or the Sudan may be different.
It's been a most fruitful year in our little corner of the world, just a quarter mile past the Worcester line and a mile from the old Norton Company smokestacks, along a slim backyard network of vegetation that runs from Princeton to the city, carrying coyote, deer and the occasional bear or moose set in flight by invading McMansions. We've had baby robins flutter from nests in a bush in front and a lilac in back. A deer ate our tulips and left a footprint by the birdbath. Rhubarb grew in profusion. Young blueberries are green and plentiful. Crabgrass has just begun its annual festival. The old apple tree is taking the year off.
On Monday at 1 p.m., a wild turkey stalked across the middle of my backyard as I sat by the window with my almost-three-year-old grandson, Dylan. We were about to run outside for a closer look when we spied what seemed to be chipmunks following the turkey. They were, in fact, tiny turkey chicks, five or six of them. The mother slowly shepherded them across the creeping charlie, through the periwinkle and on into the wilds of Mark's yard next door. So we stayed by the window, having no desire to separate a migrant mother from her children.
These days everything reminds us of Trump. But when you think about him -- unable to blot out the sun, unable to stop the rain, unwilling to harness the wind, unable to speak a coherent sentence or even an incoherent true sentence -- you realize how sadly impotent he is.
A few weeks from now, Trump and Putin, two sorry old men with misshapen souls, will sit in Helsinki and scheme ways that Trump can undermine our country and Putin can keep his thumb on The Donald. All to line their pockets with a finer brand of gold. All to give themselves the illusion of real power before they die -- lonely, decrepit and more to be pitied than hated. Which is saying something.
But they can't even stop a turkey from crossing the yard.
Sure, they can do harm. They can warp millions of warpable souls and step on the billions who resist -- they've already demonstrated that. They can set in faster motion forces that will wipe out human civilization, if we let them.
But they can't blot out the sun, or stop the rain. Or keep the birds from nesting.
Let us enjoy all those things that are beyond the immediate reach of sad, despicable, twisted men. And all those things that elude them forever -- like love, music, joy, compassion and intimacy.
Let us enjoy all good things as we set out, again and again, to stop them in their tracks.