Ode to Orange Blossums

You can't smell an orange blossom

I've lived here in the citrus stained Sonoran desert long enough to tell you that much.

You can brave the honeybees and stick your nose right in between the tiny white petals, but all you'll get is a sneezing fit from the pollen. Springtime breezes past and the trees coat themselves in them on the off chance that one or two buds might fruit, and they are beautiful, but you can't smell an orange blossom.

(at least, not on its own)

You live in the desert long enough and your nose adapts to the dust; you can smell the rain coming, even when it's clear.

You live in the desert long enough and you realize that the orange trees only fill the air when you aren't looking, when you aren't trying, when you aren't thinking to hard. They're embarrassed, maybe, like people who only sing when they think nobody's listening. They're quantum, they're petulant, they're everything and nothing at the same time.

It's springtime, and my orange trees and I aren't so different, singing out in the corner of the yard where no one can hear us. No one except the bees, that is.