Portrait Of A Tuberculosis Culture

Illuminated by glowing dye

Bacteria pearl and bloom 

Like wildflowers in winter 

                                               From chapped earth.

Beneath the slide, magnified 

And quivering with light, 

Life teems with glimmering desperation,

                                               Prepared to kill to survive.

                In this way it’s not so different than us.

                        More beautiful,   maybe. 

The disease, in floral smears,

Like an impressionist’s after-pallet, 

Lines lungs like baby’s breath,

Hangs like the despondent foxtails of 

                                               Love-lies-bleeding: 

                As flowers will grow

                        From the ground 

                        In which I’m buried,

                                                May the germs of hope 

                                                                                      Blossom

                                                                From despair:

Despair is contagious,

Finding its way into shared air,

Shading sight, casting life in

                                               Bare light.

It’s fragile in the way that a dandelion is fragile,

Begging to be broken apart just so

                                               It can     spread.