Bronchitis. 

Five twenty seven AM
and the night of fever has broken.
Still awake your eyes
show your age, show

every secret pain
carried in your soul,
the weary warrior in you,
so carefully hidden

is exposed by three days
of cough, three sleepless nights.
You are healing.
The small bottle of antibiotics,

bright blue, as if color could cure,
assure you you are mending,
even as the fever mocks you
with dreams of laughing and lust,

flying, and a world turned upside down,
where nothing can be trusted,
and surprises are so commonplace
that the dream seems more real

than real.

About this poem

Yes, I have bronchitis, or so the gravely voiced doctor, visually reminiscent of an elder Vincent Price tells me. I haven’t slept much, which might explain this poem. Fever has it’s own particular madness.

The picture was taken down the road, across the pond from Consider Bardwell farm. I am normally not one for photo manipulation beyond a little strategic cropping, but this seemed to work for the poem.

Tom