NC Pollen Inspires Poetry

If you’ve ever been to NC in April, you might possibly understand what a high pollen count truly is. I read somewhere the other day that the pollen count is usually around 1300 (whatever they count by) and this year it’s over 3600. During our recent visit to my lovely home state of IL, I made mention of the baby’s suspected allergies to the pollen. At least one family member said, “Oh yes, the pollen’s been bad here this year.” I didn’t say anything, but scoffed a little in my head.

You just don’t know pollen until you’ve experienced it here. Perhaps other states in the South have similar problems, but I lack that knowledge. What I do know is I’d never seen pollen blanket, visibly cover everything in sight with a thick yellow-green dust until I moved here. This is my back deck, my daughter was halfway through washing it before I stopped her for a pic.
This is the stoop INSIDE my back porch, and our deck furniture inside. If you look close you can see the coating of dust on the sill…again, inside a screened area. We had to wipe our shoes on the rug as soon as we came in the house, and didn’t dare walk on the carpet with our shoes on.

The onlything I can think to equate it to in Illinois farm girl terms is like the dust that coats your car, even inside the doors, when you drive 60 down a dirt road 5 or 6 times a day in the middle of July. Does that ring any bells?

And so we come to the poetry. I won’t lay claim to any of this prose, it was scribbled phrase by phrase on a white board in the ladies room at my office. Enjoy.

At 10 a.m.:
Rain, Rain, come today,
Wash that pollen all away!

At noon:
Please, please, do hurry!
Everything is green and blurry!

And at 3:
Sneeze, sneeze! Cough, cough!
I’ve definitely had enough!

No, not astoundingly clever…but if you lived here, you’d certainly empathize!

I hope all of you are enjoying your Spring, no matter where you live.

Add a comment April 11, 2010