Joe the Poet Drives to Maine

Joe the poet drives to Maine to give a speech
meets a Norovirus on the road or in his room
pukes and spews, forgets his lines, aspirates, saves his life,
speaks to docs – 150 in that room – not a vision –
of patient safety – and of another poet – dead by accident
after she caught flu reading poems at a webart conference
long ago – thus creating poetic irony for Joe's future poems –
a point not lost upon this faux Joe who's neither
man nor doc, but a poet-mother-birder cured by
photographing Life Bird Sandhill Cranes at Belgrade Lakes in Maine

Published in Joe the Poet: The Anthology. Beatlick Press, 2014