Virus Index

Index cards and virus, odd companions:

the first sized three by five;

the other, hides in plain sight,

each call out for attention.

The cards pile in a stack on the desk, 

tied up in a red rubber band,

the deck cut from white cardstock,

one side, blank; the other, printed

with blue-lines, except on top, red.

Hairy corona-globes jet unseen,

each filament topped with red tentacles,

world trekkers, hitch-hiking parasites,

equal opportunity assassins devour

all races, creeds, and colors. 

Slap and click, thumb strums deck,

bend and curl from flick of card corners,

shuffles mangle, soften, mis-shape paper,

a yellow tinge soaks in from oily hands

like hands that ruin and blacken stalactites.

The virus ignites a snap and crackle, 

a fever so hot, water can’t slake

the dry mouth and sore throat pain.

Hack shake and rattle sets lungs on fire,

grinding down to blue-lined quiet. 

The music, opposable thumbs strum cards

stacked in layers like sedimentary rocks,

but the red crowned virus wears 

no rings on her fingers, no bells on her toes, 

she makes silence wherever she goes. 

        (After The Rain Stick by Seamus Heaney)

Saved by Spring & A Woodcock: Monorhyme

in the year of COVID-19, she forgets march equinox

time tumbles like an unsteady stack of blocks,

hits bare earth, strikes on rocks

in lockdown, barricaded at home, can she outfox

the corona virus commandeering the air, that hawk?

a virus, regal red inquisitor wearing a crown, gems faux,

stalks the skies, a bringer of sickness who knocks  

then breaks down the door, admitting no roadblocks. 

she notices curly willow pushing lime lace and walks

north the day after the sun crosses the equator, tracks

the wrestling seasons, caught in a headlock,

climbs a deer track to a grove of hemlocks,

sees, follows the flash of a red-eyed groshawk,

talons stretched, a chase, a dive at a smaller woodcock

that ducks undercover into a brush stack,

saved for another night calling sky dance amid burdocks

        (After A Monorhyme for the Shower by Dick Davis)

http://www.verse-virtual.org/2020/June/ingrid-bruck-2020-june.html

Date Published: June 1, 2020