Enemy

 
In these lengthening days 
it's easy to feel that we 
are past any danger. The idea 
of crowded hospital beds 
and makeshift isolation tents inside 
stadiums sounds like a bad fairy tale, 
until the angel of sickness walks 
across your threshold and sets down
his luggage. When he hangs up a towel,
sets a worn toothbrush on the sink.
you know he's there to stay 
a little while longer.  
Even so, he is not the enemy. 
Without any special malice,
he is only doing what's in his nature.
But the enemy took ships across the water
and returned with shackled bodies
loaded in the hold. The enemy
cracked a whip across the fields
where our people bent over beds
of garlic and strawberries.
The enemy is a bullet 
that will take out your eye
or stop your heart even when you've
knelt on the ground as instructed.
The enemy is a god unto himself.
It shows no mercy but fears
every dusky body running 
and playing in sunlight,
numbers of them walking now 
with a single purpose across the land.