Blast from the Past

I'm kind of too sick to concentrate and write. (Hell, I've been watching movies all day because reading books was too difficult.)

In the spirit of illness, I bring for your reading pleasure a poem from my past.

---
A Winter Sonnet


In wintertime we stay inside and drink
our herbal teas in hopes that we might not
succumb to colds and flus. We make a stink
when illness first appears as drippy snot.

We blow our noses ‘til they’re raw and red--
The trash can soon overflows with tissues.
The store brand cough drops cannot clear our heads.
We try to put aside these trifling issues.

We go to work and spread this horrid plague.
While sniffling in our shirtsleeves we’re mumbling
“Everything is fine.” But fine is too vague
a word for such a coughing, grumbling

disease that takes up all our strength and time.
Until we‘ve kicked it, all we do is whine.

----

I wrote that a while ago, but I still think it's pretty good. As I recall I spent a while making it appear to rhyme while phrasing it so that the end rhymes were downplayed in an out-loud reading. (I'm hoping this is my final version, and not a partway edited one full of embarassing errors...)

Here's to drinking herbal tea and using a million tissues!

~Later