I should not be reading THE STAND at this time

but I am... actually, I am listening to the audiobook, which makes it worse.



That is fiction.  This is reality, about Covid 19, which we have barely begun to experience.


From fellow poet Julie Kane, on her Facebook page:

FYI: What it takes to get COVID-tested in rural Louisiana. I have been sick for 9 days now, since 

returning home from AWP: first a fever, aches and pains, and upset stomach; then a cough, intermittent 

low fever, congestion, headache, laryngitis (3 straight days now of no voice whatsoever). The local 

Access2 urgent care center has been allocated ONE (1) COVID test kit. For its entire patient population. I 

met the initial criteria for testing (fever, cough, at-risk age group, 

 traveled through an international airport 

recently). Then I had to take 2 blood tests and get a chest X ray. The first blood test (for bacterial 

infection) had to be normal or elevated: mine normal. The second blood test (for inflammation) had to be 

elevated: mine elevated. The chest X ray had to show infiltrates for pneumonia: mine showed mild 

COPD but not infiltrates. The nurse faxed all my materials to her supervisor. She wanted to test me. 

Permission to test was denied. (It really makes no difference, as the outcome would be the same either 

way: stay home unless shortness of breath develops. And at least I found out that the laryngitis is not 

bacterial and so cannot be treated with antiobiotics. But do not trust the statistics on # of cases in the 

U.S., because it is damned near impossible to get tested.)


and a poem from Weldon Kees

The Coming on the Plague
By Weldon Kees

September was when it began.
Locusts dying in the fields; our dogs
Silent, moving like shadows on a wall;
And strange worms crawling; flies of a kind
We had never seen before; huge vineyard moths;
Badgers and snakes, abandoning
Their holes in the field; the fruit gone rotten;
Queer fungi sprouting; the fields and woods
Covered with spiderwebs; black vapors
Rising from the earth-- all these,
And more began that fall. Ravens flew round
The hospital in pairs. Where there was water,
We could hear the sound of beating clothes
All through the night. We could not count
All the miscarriages, the quarrels, the jealousies.
And one day in a field I saw
A swarm of frogs, swollen and hideous,
Hundreds upon hundreds, sitting on each other,
Huddled together, silent, ominous,
And heard the sound of rushing wind.