Sundowner

No macroscopic creatures patrol
These rooms where the microscopic beasts
Require constant harrying to keep

Their numbers safely scarce. The humans
Have these rooms otherwise to ourselves,
Our cotton bedding, plastic wrappers,

Chrome-polished medical equipment,
Our innumerable inventions.
The idea is to protect the sick

And injured, stabilize the symptoms,
Process the persons and release them
Sufficiently healthy for the world,

Sufficiently healthy to survive
Another go ‘round in the wide world
Where micro and macroscopic run

Rampant around a minor planet
Only exceptional, if at all,
Thanks to elaborate survival.

Back in the hospital room, there’s work
To be done, units of transfusion,
Medicines in and as solution,

And, as sunset lights the surfaces,
The thought crosses that maybe there’s more
Than the elaborate survival.