It started with a fever
That led to a thermometer
Inside an open mouth
That seemed too red
With white bumps in back,
Which led to the doctor
Who made us wait
In her greenhouse of germs
Where virus smears lurk
And love little bodies
Like the ones with strep,
So they climbed inside
And waited for some days
Before ‘sploding out a tush
And hurtling out a mouth
Into another
And another
And another
Until we all were bedded down
With sharts and shivers and Schweppes,
And then when things seemed better
And one went off to school
With a little weakened body,
Susceptible to germs,
We caught a cold.
The Second Magpie 