———
“called alveoli, where blood and air are separated by such thin membranes that oxygen and carbon dioxide can pass into and out of the bloodstream, respectively. Between them, the lungs have somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred million alveoli.

Severe COVID-19 causes many of them to either collapse or fill with fluid. The virus attacks the cells lining the alveoli; our overactive immune systems, in trying to fight the virus, may be damaging them as well.
The result is that not enough oxygen gets into the blood.”

                                                        ­          
§§§

we forget to marvel at the finery of our bodies,
the microscopic interactions, the minute particulates intersecting,
the multiplicity of languages of each limb, each system, multilingual,
the beauty of all this communicative combinatory,
that enables the gossamer threads
that make the ordinary a repetitive miracle, understanding both the
wonder of our instinctual, our five senses, and their finite limitations

we tendency focus on the visible,
the skin, our excretions,,
accepting even normative, please go away, periodic pain,
but the exceptional,
that states loudly,
what you cannot see can ****,
we ignore until the last minute

hopeful that the clues that are maybe contained,
re the tearing of the fabric of six hundred million
sacs you were unaware you possessed,
can be rewoven, the palpitations your fear be calmed,
the chest muscles quaking, the gasping for molecules
of oxygen can be ventilated, just like the truth that too,
needs a good and a proper airing, without the artifices tubular

now that you are fully conscious of the unseen beauty upon
which each depends, and the masks we wear proudly lest others
we infect, greater irony that we mustn’t pollute our atmosphere,
perhaps, will it make you question the supposed certainties
we sarcastically,
say we know for sure

and respect the uncertainties by which we live and breathe,
the poetry of the body internal,
every second an exercise in risk taking, the miracle of each moment
a blessed privilege, not being conscious that our physical subsistence
is a near thing, depending on thinnest membranes unseen,
not fooling ourselves that we are each a human god,
an Oz, great and powerful,
who hides behind a curtain.

§§§§