TUESDAY POEM: "Blood, Thou Art Blood" by Andrew M. Bell

BLOOD, THOU ART BLOOD

With never a thought for the shadow of corrosion

nor the fertile breeding ground

of eel slime and rabbit guts,

we took adventure’s companion:

the pocket-knife,

and sliced our thumbs.

A fragment of pain

much less than its apprehension;

to watch

the rubyed jewel of life

swell

then run to kiss the earth with salty gravity.

Pressing our thumbs together,

blood into blood,

we made a symbol of our bond.

This was a time

when blood was blood

and not more virulent

than rats in Renaissance Europe.

When “Magic” Johnson was a messiah.

When dentists and doctors probed with impunity.

Before plasma was a Trojan Horse for haemophiliacs.

Now

even the mosquito’s drone assails our mortality

yet we are loath

to shipwreck its cargo of strange blood.

The body once a temple

now a fortress.

But what is to be our vigilance

when the enemy lies within?

Ó Andrew M. Bell


The poet would like to acknowledge Micropress New Zealand (which unfortunately has ceased as a publication) in whose pages this poem first appeared.


POET'S NOTE: 
I first wrote this poem in 1993 when HIV and AIDS were very much in the global consciousness. The world's media has long since moved on to other tragedies and disasters, but HIV and AIDS have not gone away. Millions of people, especially in Africa, still die from HIV/AIDS.