Flu season

Delighting in sunlit moments,

I would grow into a large and languorous beast

were it not for my visitor, this blessed and most vexing virus.

Oh dear virus, you give me gifts of vagueness and lassitude.

You give me gifts of irritation and inflammation.

Snot’s not your only offering but also challenge and answer.

White cells battle with viral invaders. Tiny life is lost on my behalf. 

Here is another (another!) lesson on the inner struggle

and I wipe metaphor from a reddened nose.

I enter the day with heat, joy and hacking cough.

I am taught again that food is simply sustenance--

learn that both health and sickness are obscuring veils.

I pray today for all those who are well, that they may not languish.

From my nest of crumpled tissue I pray that I may respond as valiantly

as my white cells—

—as the least of my humble white cells—

to this vast world of woe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------(rhonda)