It really shouldn’t come as a surprise
that spreading illness is the biggest threat
to us. Creating cities any size
repressed the wise and let our breed forget
direction, stars, and close geography,
the good and bad of plants, the boon of air
refreshed by stream and purified by tree –
it’s probable we flourished then and there.

But we progressed from wilderness to town
to city life, as nature shrank to vague.
What we thought up may really have been down,
and though we know of smallpox and the plague,
we lost our sense of peril – sad but true –
and now we suffer consequential flu.