There's a constant tension between the beauty of our New England spring and the fear and paranoia induced by the coronavirus pandemic. While out for a walk in my neighborhood on a lovely May day, I was greeted with normal spring signs of birth and renewal: a bird feather, a beautiful robin's egg, a brilliant blue sky dappled with fast-moving clouds of many shapes, and crabapple trees coming into full flower. But then there were the gloves.

Normally the pair of discarded orange nubby gardening gloves might mean someone was coming back to plant some more. But not now. In a different year, the single black glove could have simply been something that emerged out of a melting snowbank from the winter we only recently left behind. But again, not now. These are gloves thrown off hurredly by someone who wanted to rid themselves of whatever they had just touched.

The mind focuses on the ever present danger in an instant, no matter how pretty the day, today.