Like James Whitcomb Riley, I’d like to be “Knee-Deep in June,” and “jes’ a-sorto’ lazin’ there” with nothing on my mind except bobwhites and strawberries on the vine and the whole sky overhead.

Instead, I’m worrying about everything from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the threat of terrorism to a staggering national debt nearing the $8.36 trillion amount that my grandsons will inherit.

And if that’s not enough, add the worries about global warming, health care costs, tax cuts, energy dependence, immigration policies – and worse – atrocities against humanity ranging from the Abu Ghraib prison to the Darfur region of Sudan.

Yet while I just want to be “Knee-Deep in June,” the nation’s Congress is knee deep in debates on same-sex marriage and flag-burning punishment, such priorities for the life of me I can’t fathom.

Apparently, some others can’t either, including New York Times columnist Frank Rich who wrote on June 4: “The current Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has proudly put on this month’s legislative agenda constitutional amendments to stop same-sex marriage and flag burning. ‘Right now people in this country are saying it’s OK to desecrate that flag and to burn it,’ he [Frist] said on Fox News last Sunday, though it’s not clear exactly who these traitors are. A Nexis search turns up only one semi-recent American flag-burning incident – by a drunk and apparently apolitical teenager in Mr. Frist’s home state, Tennessee, in 2005.”

Rich wrote of the marriage-amendment campaign: “Though the amendment has no chance of passing, Mr. Bush apparently still thinks, as he did in 2004, that gay-baiting remains just the diversion from a war gone south.”

Former President Bill Clinton said the same thing this week in South Portland where he came to raise money for Gov. John Baldacci’s re-election campaign. “They [Republicans] see nothing wrong with coming up with divisive issues to try and take people’s minds off what’s really going on in America,” Clinton said.

Which brings me to my own distraction, one that will free my mind of worries just for a while. One that, with hope, will prevent me from feeling so grim about what is going on in America. I’m going outside and get “Knee-Deep in June.”

“But when June comes – Clear my throat with wild honey! Rench my hair in the dew! And hold my coat! Whoop out loud! And throw my hat! June wants me, and I’m to spare! Spread them shadders anywhere, I’ll git down and waller there, and obleeged to you at that!”