Two COVID-19 Misanthropes
Human connection is a distancing memory
I walk with my wife through the wilds
Of suburbia.
People no longer inhabit this land.
Except us.
Look, there, ahead!
A two-legged upright animal.
Get away from us, you lumbering hazmat!
You bag of contagion!
Look at it spew its pathogenic
Plume of pestilence.
We cross the street,
Giving the specter of death its due,
That half-dozen feet of distancing
We hope is enough.
But no!
Now two more virus shedders
Enter the sidewalk ahead of us!
Their mouths are paired smokestacks
Discharging microscopic droplets,
Aerosolizing death
Into pandemic mists.
We cross the street again.
We zig, we zag.
We cut across lawns.
We run the COVID-19 obstacle course
To avoid these two-legged reapers.
Plumes, plumes, everywhere.
Exhalations of death sentences.
You unspeakable creatures can no longer come near us.
Get away!
Be gone!
