Silent Spring... for humans
Part two, in a six-part series in which Marilyn Bouma observes and records the remarkable arrival of spring.
Marilyn Bouma, Silent Spring... for humans, watercolour on paper. © 2020
A pair of mourning doves come to my bird feeder every winter. On an early morning run, I saw this pair sitting on a stop sign a few corners away from my house. I changed the name to my street sign and did a creative abbreviation of the main arterial roads – Kingston Road and Midland Avenue – MidKing (there is actually is a gas station on that corner with that name). I added DOM which reads as Mid Kingdom (a Lord of the Rings reference to middle kingdom). It dawned on me that dom is probably short for domain or dominion and deduced that kingdom means the king’s domain or dominion. Hence Midkingdom is my domain.
Silent Spring is the title of an enviromental book written by Rachel Carson in 1962, after the realization that many birds were no longer around to sing. They had disappeared after the liberal and indiscriminate use of pesticides throughout American farmlands. With the coronavirus forcing humanity to self-isolate the world has also become silent. Since many people live alone now, I have called this work Silent Spring... for humans.
