Every frivolous whim

I’ve been thinking that we—meaning I—need something to start the new month off on a different note from most of my posts for National Poetry Month. May 1^st is May Day, which in European tradition celebrates the full blossoming of Spring. It’s also Beltane, in the Celtic calendar, marking the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. It’s also International Workers Day, celebrating the strength and value of the laboring classes around the world. And it's a day beloved by dictators to show off their military prowess.

For all these reasons, today’s earworm should be exuberant, lively and danceable. So “The Lusty Month of May” has buzzing around my head for about a week and a half. It’s from the musical Camelot, with Queen Guenevere urging the Knights of the Round Table and the courtiers to cast off the gloom of winter, bust some moves and be fruitful.

Now, I’d been thinking about the song just because it’s such an animated piece. But this week I started considering the setting—the whole play; that made me sad. Because Camelot is about a king who wants to turn the notion of might makes right around and create a court where those with power don’t use it to oppress those without it, but instead deploy might for right.

In the end, it collapses not so much because Lancelot and Guenevere’s love betrays Arthur, but because that evil toad Mordred poisons the entire court, bringing it all down; all of it. The final scene is Arthur telling a young Tom of Warwick:

“Don’t let it be forgot
“That once there was a spot
“For one, brief shining moment
“That was known as Camelot.”

And this caused me to wonder if we in the United States are in that moment where everything is crashing down because an evil toad poisoned our society and we’re about to be consigned to the mists of history.

Well, anyway—“The Lusty Month of May”, from the original Broadway cast.

©2026 Bas Bleu