COVIDs and Rhinoceroses

 

“Today we’ll talk about the virus,”

Miss Minnish said, and drew a perfect circle on the board

Then shaded edges ‘til it was a ball, (she also teaches Art).

Then she drew spines, with tips so finely rendered

“They look sticky,” Erin said, and I agreed

“And just for fun, let’s put a window here

So we can see inside,” Miss Minnish said

And looking through the window we saw

Two jagged lines, “These are its genes,” she said

“Of which it has but two. Enough,” she said “to guide it to

A hungry human cell in noses or lungs and order these same

Human cells to make more COVID cells just like it.”

(Like birds that lay their eggs in others’ nests, I thought

And Erin said, “More like ten million for the price of one.”)

“But How big is it,” Jeremy sitting at the front wondered aloud.

“Bigger than a fly’s eye?”

“You take a fly’s eye, say,” Miss Minnish said,

And drew one on the board (she also teaches Art)

“Now cut it in half (she cut it with a brush)

Then cut the half in half, and again and again and again

For 6 gazillion times!”

She told us then about masks and spittle and droplets carrying viruses

Like vagrants on a bus, and how 2 meters equals 6 feet, 6.7 inches

But I was barely listening.

 

I’ve always been afraid of big, big things

Like hippopotami and elephants, grizzlies and tall giraffes

And other things I’ve only seen in zoos. (Not so much dogs

Unless they’re big like Larsen’s German Shepherd.)

But now, tiny, evil things are everywhere: I feel them crawling in my bed

My hair, my pillow, my clothes, my book . . . Peeyoo!

No leash, no bars can hold them safely back.

Darn you, COVID, for wiping out the edges of my fears:

I may not sleep again, hay for my nightmares fills my universe.

 

At midnight, mother comes and sits on the side of my bed. She takes off my mask . . . and then takes off the second one. We talk about bears and rhinoceroses and how they almost never show up in Rosthern. We talk about dust and flies and germs and COVID and we admit small stuff is everywhere. Then we talk about the people world . . . the middle-sized world in which we humans live. She says the big things and the little things sometimes creep into our world and we middle-sized have to learn how to protect ourselves. She says there are no rhinoceroses or COVIDs in the room so I’m safe ‘til morning. I tell her she can go now and she does, but just to be safe I put one mask back on . . .  but not the second one.