The Poetry of Daniel Harrison

    

 

Neuraminidase

Drifting over curving oceans
Landing in our nation
Devastating protein puzzles
Start their replication

For Boeing cabin stowaways
No customs, no delay
Slipping through the legal shield
Green carded, here to stay

Enzyme coated nano-spheroid
Cell wall interlopers
Seed the crowded transit cars with
Airborne viral gropers

Damp exposure surface membrane
Open for infections
Target zone for tiny sucker
Mushroom cap connections

Adaptive parasitic specks
Cleave their hosts routinely
Blitzkrieg exponential storms of
Sabotaged machinery

Antigenic number knots start
Heated battle fevers
Dreaded cold delirium turns
Doubters to believers

A few genes short of real life
But smarter than we think
If they could they’d thank us for
These tissues warm and pink

So when we flail blindly through
The next pandemic curse
Consider that our hacking lungs
Comprise their universe



[Feb 2006]