All this burgeoning has an impact on how we feel, of course. We feel like getting out and about. We feel like going for bike rides, or putting the boat in the water, or having a cookout and friends over.
This ineffable sense of relief, of opening like leaf buds on a tree and feeling the breeze, is bound to affect behavior far more than any stated restrictions from government entities. You can't just tamp this down, you can't squash the seasonal optimism that comes with Spring, rooted in the bones. In fact, Spring would not be Spring without it.
Spring, in other words, is much more than the earth turning its northern hemisphere back toward the sun. Spring is more than mere weather.
Which is why, while states everywhere are trying to carefully calibrate the loosening of the COVID-19 restrictions, they are finding perhaps that the people they presume to rule are listening to them less carefully and less often.
Spring is a state of mind as much as it is a season. So I might as well end with this beautiful poem by Philip Larkin.
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