Nineteen Spikes

Then the storm came. It raked our world with terrible teeth.

Then dissolved—like a calcium spike—back into bone—

I see what you mean. But your barn’s not really a barn.

Old lady just sat there—married to the guy fifty years—

Wash your doorknob. Your hands. Triage your mail.

I had a nightmare I was living my present life—

Can’t touch my nose. It’s called resorption. What?

It throbs like crickets in my ears. Your BP was what?—

No touching. COVID petals. She said wash your hands.

It took his body hours to work down through the corn—

The quicksand weight of it. Her in her folding chair.

Him with a new auger for the bin. He sort of spilled out—

So the viburnum’s full of  little pink blooms. Bees in orbit.

With their spikes, their barbs—poisons—perfumes—

Then the hail balls, jagged as kidney stones, and a foot of rain.

Trees seemed to blow up—then the whole thing, whoosh—

Some natural forms are so successful they’re viral.

Calcium nodes on your clavicle. I see them everywhere—

How small can they get? How big? Any size explodes—

Is it gas? You mean the barn? Is it gas? A heat storm—

Barn = a non-SI metric unit of area equal to 10-28 m2 (or 100 fm2)—

To quantify interaction of a nucleus with an electric field gradient—

And branchlets are pithy, many-angled, winged. Liquid-

Ambar styraciflua. Surrounded by rusty, hairy bracts—

Looks like a tiny naval mine. Between 80 and 120 spikes.

Terminal barbs. A special form of moored contact mine—

And equipped with a plummet. He fell right through.

The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles—

Give coronaviruses their name. Sweet gum. Storax.

Redgum. Star-leaved alligator-wood. Limpet mine—

In place of  torpedoes, the silos carry twelve charges.

I heard my heartbeat in my bones. A positive “kill rate”—

Airbnb. Missile Silo Fixer-Upper Now Swanky Bachelor Pad.

Storm shelter; a storage bin; your “ultimate” safe room—

Each virus is a single pleomorphic spherical particle—

Satin-walnut—with bulbous surface projections—

I see what you mean. Wash your hands. Like that really helps.

Leaves ripped clean off. It’s coming back. I know—