Late morning and the birds are quieter now than those first hours of dawn. Still there's the wheeeeep wheeeep from a flurry of finches. And the wheezy high pitched whistles of the wax-wings, like listening to electricity escapoing from wires.
The air is soft and damp, full of impending rain. The sky, the clouds, the rain all feel held back, constrained, the way we feel right now, restrained, contained, quarantined. A lazy wind pushes the pepper tree around, rearranging the drooping branches, heavy with pepper berries. A mockingbird flutters out of the pepper tree down to the half-full bird bath and then back up to the fence, to hop along his personal train track.
The lilies along the back of the house have white trumpet-shaped blooms perched in rows along a central stem, little handkerchiefs draped along a slanting line. A particularly luminous, white catching and holding light, glowing even against the grey-white of the low slung sky. Tiny stamens drip with faintly yellow pollen and the pistil looks like a three-pronged fishhook of some kind emerging up out of the middle, the prongs tipping back in elaborate curls The fragrance is faint, at least to me, a hint of citrus, a touch of ginger.
The pollen, of course, makes me cough, makes me sneeze. And no one wants to be coughing these days. We hold back from coughs, we refrain from sneezes, not wanting to think of consequences, the train of possibilities, no matter how far-fetched. Any indication of illness, once brushed aside or ignored - a chill, a hot spell, aches in legs or shoulders - now carry that tiny electrical charge, that tiny bit of what if -- what if this is the first step.
We hold our breath, we hold ourselves, we hold back.
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Noise makers!