Who's afraid of the
iron lung? ricketts? po-li-o?
spent maladies long
adapted to, outran,
then - mutation! - to bird flu
and masked persons
on city buses,
afraid to cough, forgetting
about polio,
knowing that what took
grandfather, felled dead in
the paddy for want
of medicine, could
only touch them viscerally
via cathode ray tube
yet panic passed
like a baton as people
sniffed the air for
fear that would release
the hollowness embodied
by ricketts, the sight
of people hooked
to breathing machines and, that
devil, polio.
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1 comment:
"Blight" is a terrific word. I'm keeping a list of your word pool to cull from.
I even sung the first stanza to the tune of " " to see if it fit rythmically. It did up until "fall away..."
Of course, I shiver to think the gravity of this subject matter. And would like to see "grandfather, felled dead in the paddy for want..." further developed.
It's neat to see stanzas, here. I'm on a stanza kick lately; your haiku form (pretty consistent) deserves a big hat's off.
Didn't bird flu come from civic cats?
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