The daffodils are bowing their heads on this gray afternoon
In unison.
Perhaps they are ashamed
To be witness to a plague.
Corona may not be a direct threat to them
Yet they bear witness.
They are audience to ambulances singing their chorus in a minor key incessantly.
Perhaps the daffodils are lost in thought,
Heads bowed
Wondering why the hordes of bikers and runners
In Central Park have disappeared.
And why the birdsong is so shrill and audible.
All the people masked, social distancing.
Very few talking into the air
On cellphones in pockets, ear buds in place;
The cellphone litany was once offensive.
And yet now that it has been erased
I sorely miss that “noise.”
No doubt the daffodils by the reservoir
Feel the same.
Some silences are lovely.
Others deafening.
The yellow of the daffodils is fading fast.
Just yesterday they were upright and vivid in hue.
Today, their posture bowed. They appear pale.
It may be simply science unleashed.
Gravitropism overriding phototropism
On a day that the sun forgot to shine.
Or perhaps the daffodils bowed are a congregation praying.
Praying people will soon return to the lives they once knew
Before the pandemic.
Forever changed.
And yet return nonetheless.
Karin Charnoff-Katz is a physician at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
