Confessions of a Virus, #1
First of all, I am not out to get you, personally
I don’t even know who you are
It’s just a home we seek, nothing more
That’s not such a strange pursuit, is it?
A nice dark interior place, a throat
A lining to cling to, a moist lung,
Perhaps a membrane or the cave of a sinus
Think in your terms of a little boat
Is this so hard to understand about us?
We have so much in common, all this clinging
All about hanging on, hanging in there
Maybe we’re not so alien then, after all
Getting the leg up, to use your language,
A place to latch on to, though of course we have no legs
… But, wait, before you apply one of your virucidals
I beg you: Hold, think for a moment before you decide
Yes, think about love. All right, we call it multiplying
But let’s be honest, are we in this so different from you
Isn’t all your clinging about love, and ours for death
Really so different, for they’re both about the breath?
Trying to catch it, the perfect liminal moment
Past and future all together in sudden oozy fusion
Love and death, the two great illusions
We cling to, all of us, humans and viruses, you and I
That’s it, right? Why try to deny it?
We are in this together, one by the other, side by side
Which is why we are especially drawn this season
To the older cohort of your species.
That’s the rhyme and that’s the reason,
Yet if your own death is involved, forgive me,
But a virus tells the truth, you see
And perhaps if one day we will really meet
Our death and your love, your death and our love
Then there will be no difference between below and above
Trust me, when this is over it will all be clear and perfect
And now, if you must, go on, I won’t budge
I appreciate our talk and I hold no grudge
Go on, go on, I’m ready, don’t hesitate: you may disinfect.
Social Distancing
with a nod to Robert Frost
In some places they’ve dictated a meter
In others they say six feet apart
“Better’n six feet under,” someone joked
Or tried to and we startled,
Moving from him to safety, we hoped
As the quip may have been launched with expectorant
And, if unmasked, and inhaled, we might die for want
Of not paying enough attention to social distancing
Of not crossing the sidewalk, or stepping off the curb
Of giving in to this suddenly forbidden urge
Yet forgive us, we longed only for a touch
It had been so long, and we had suffered so much
Loneliness, of which in ordinary times the mortality rate
We have heard was also hard to tally, yet often great.