Two Poems

By Stuart McFarlane

Thoughts on Coronavirus

Bacteria, they say, are alive.
Coronavirus, they say, is alive
and, yet, not alive.
Its only purpose on this Earth
is to replicate itself as fast
as it can.
It’s so small it almost isn’t there.
And, yet, it’s there. It’s everywhere.
Its very smallness is its strength.
It manifests a fierce impulse
to survive. And to survive,
It kills.

Yet, it doesn’t know it kills.
It doesn’t know it doesn’t know.
It doesn’t know it doesn’t know
It doesn’t know.
Deep down, deep inside our body cells,
It wages sub-atomic warfare;
Its murderous motivation unfathomable.
A million more – it doesn’t care.
It doesn’t care it doesn’t care.
It doesn’t care it doesn’t care
It doesn’t care.

Joe

I hear you’re looking for Joe.
He’s not what he was, you know.

They took him away in the night.
He won’t get any worse – but he might.
All you can do is hope and pray,
for miracles do happen, they say.
But you know Joe, he never did God,
always found it all a bit odd.
‘So who made the virus?’ he’d sometimes ask.
You can’t see God’s face. He’s wearing a mask.
He’s not said a word since the ICU.
They said they’d let me know of anything new.
So here I sit; I sit by the phone.
I wait for the call he’s on his way home.
I wait; I watch the clock on the wall.
I watch the light die; and darkness fall.

I hear you’re looking for Joe.
He’s not what he was, you know