Travelers Welcome

Travelers Welcome

Thursday, March 26, 2015

The ATCV-1 Virus

by Rick Mitchell

They finally found it!
Researchers—that is—found
the virus that accounts for
something lost to me now about
where my swimming trunks ended
up after the midnight
dip into Henderson’s pond.

A virus that “impairs
cognitive ability” lurks in
the green slime I mashed
in my brother’s face and tried to
smoke after drying in the sun.

The stuff that makes all those ducks
so stupid also slows us down, becomes
our pot, our meth, our two martini
one night stand.

But they don’t know how it
travels, how someone gets
it and someone else escapes.
It may creep through an open
sore or worse, swim up some
open passageway, or worse yet be
on the tail end of the splash my brother
sloshed in my eyes before I forgot
to hold his head under water just
a little longer.

No certain answers, not yet,
so now we study 10% slower
 than normal, to make sure we’re not
being fooled by some camouflaged
Chinese bug that sucks on rocks
 in the hole under the bridge, planted
to turn our brains to mush,
our hopes to vibrant
green fantasies.

No comments:

Post a Comment