Sonnet: Hand

Make cover-cough and washing hands an art
Refining measures overlooked through use
Invest a precious twenty seconds smart
With soap and water smite corona loose,
The hand the master fabricant whose touch
Draws pleasure or sharp pain to sound alarm:
Extremes of ice and fire but nonesuch
Against the minute virus doing harm.
The index, thumb and pinkie, middle, ring
Unheralded translators of the mind
That cut and shape, smooth and finish, bring
Through discipline great bounty to our kind
But guard an errant pinkie trailing skin
On surfaces that tracks contagion in.


May 2020