Postscript: Late March 2020

William Wordsworth, two centuries ago: “Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

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Just after sunset, pulsing fist of Venus in the west. Close to the waxing crescent moon. Seemingly close: Venus, 84 million miles away; our reliable “natural” satellite a within-reach 240,000 miles.

Earthshine, sunlight reflected from this blue planet, illuminating what appears—to us—the otherwise unlit portion of the moon.

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Bob Dylan:

“Things have changed.”

“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”

“A hard rain’s gonna fall.”

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Northern California spring, pandemic hyper-bloom. Hyper-busy no-nonsense bees making their own kind of hay while the sun’s high. Zero to twenty mph in a millisecond. Stunt pilots swooping toward you as they head to the hive, veering away at the last possible instant.

A butterfly alights. Basks: solar recharge. Wings lifting and falling very slowly, as if catching their breath.

Placard in neighbor’s window: in our america love wins.

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More than forty years ago, Three Wanderers from Wapping was published, my mother’s adaptation of an episode from Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. Illustrations by Charles Mikolaycak, corpses and rats vividly rendered. For the young of all ages, as my mother thought of such projects. For “ages: 10 & up,” as the publisher marketed it.

“It was the summer of 1665, and the plague was raging in London,” my mother’s tale begins. Gatherings banned, the only open business “that of tending the dead and the dying.”

And, my mother wrote:

It is hardly surprising that in the midst of all this disease and dying, many folk turned to the scores of mountebanks and wizards who promised protection or cure—or at least knowledge of the future—by a thousand outrageous methods. Fortune-tellers read cards and tea leaves. Astrologers interpreted the stars. Conjurors and quacks sold multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they were called. The pitiable folk wore all sorts of charms and amulets to fortify their bodies against the plague.

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That was there and then. Here in the cottage, it’s five a.m. Venus and crescent moon absenting themselves till evening. Town stiller than still. Deathly quiet.

And those who have a home? Sheltered in place. Home / bound. Waiting to learn who the virus took, spared.