Staying home is light duty when compared to the daily round of danger faced by health workers and all the other essential neighbors who live fully exposed to the coronavirus pandemic.
But even light duty gets old after long enough. As my friend Bob told me long ago, “It’s not the length of time that bothers me; it’s the intensity.” Boredom and uncertainty, with just a touch of panic, makes for an intense mix.
In the meantime, as Michael Valentine Smith remarked succinctly, but cryptically – in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land – “Waiting is.”
In the spring of fever
Facebook says trillium bloom downstate but I
see none, and that heron have returned, though
I see none fly. Somewhere fruit trees bloom, but
not the apple beside my drive. Not yet. Not yet.Each day easier to keep indoors, working, watching
news, working more. Making another meal then
washing up. Keeping a sensible bedtime. Waiting,
hiding out, as the hare outwaits the prowling owl.Each day much like the next – weeks, months?
What is time? Hair grows down over my ears.
Days blow by like leaves. This is how a wizard,
lost in thought, turns into a tree on the hill.Note: unpublished draft
