A day spent sick in bed, dozing and reading
Of the income-leveling capacity of plagues,
Daughter in bed beside and coughing as well
Although without the fever, playing on a pad.
The great forest of the body reminds itself
That less than half its cells, a tenth of its genes
Are human, the rest a compact but vast
Ecosystem, currently unbalanced by a virus
Let loose among the commensals and familiars.
The implicated but more uniquely alien
Invaders of words and numbers, ruminations,
Are quite put out by having to compete
With a conventional pathogen for the brain’s
Attention, but oh well. We’ll be here tomorrow
When the virus is gone, and if the virus
Carries the whole body away with it,
We’ll quietly lie in wait for the next one.
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