Fever

"Never forget you are my children"

--Louise Gluck, The Wild Iris ("Early Darkness")

There are words for this:

Bacillus, the rod-shaped bacteria,

virus, phage from the Greek

meaning one who devours.

At night the colonies encrust the valleys

and pearl the bays.

So you meant to be inhospitable?

There is no thought,

only a natural response

to a disturbance of the membranes--

obstruction of the marshes

congestion of carbon in the air.

And so the temperature will rise . . .

Just for a time

to dislodge

the unwanted visitors

showing us

showing you?

what we are.

Never forget, you are my children.

I brought you here to be my eyes.

Why can you not see this?

You wish us to imagine

we are not your chosen ones.

I would choose you if I could

but that way lies suicide--do you wish to destroy

every living thing?

And so we must suffer.

You will always suffer;

it is your way.

Yet in return

In return you give us nothing.

I give you

the hurricane's cold eye.

"Fever" appeared in WEI, an international journal on women and the environment based in Toronto, in no. 74/75 (Spring/Summer 2007).