PLAGUE SUIT
- Apr 24
- 1 min read
By Roger Vickery
Leaf blower in gloved hand, I speak into your intercom,
humble as a serf come to tend the laird’s needs, explaining
council can’t approve felling the oak that blocks you
from a pristine view until I conduct an ‘arboreal review’.
As we stroll your ample grounds, I’d love to ask if your mind
ever strays to the Caesar stone dust that layered your cutters
in silica snow? Some days my brother came home looking
like a moulting polar bear. But you mustn’t catch the drift
of what’s coming. I’m hoping you’ll think the dust I’ll cream-pie
across your face with my blower is nothing more
than a punking by some ‘dirt bag’ ex-employee. We don’t want
you rushing to doctors. Night sweats, chest stabs, groin lumps
will take you there soon enough. Not that any lung gun maestro
will do you any good. Once the silicosis python slithers inside
you’ll have four, maybe five years… all of them hard.
You’re getting quality stuff. I donned a plague suit, tore away
the caution tape and vacuumed a batch from my brother’s bench.
I’ve been watching you. I know your habits, your winning smile.
You jog in the park on Sundays with a rescue dog named Moses.
When I lope beside your gym-bellowed puffs, all I can hear are
… gasps and groans and the hack and crackle
of the ventilator pump that starves our house of sleep.