The Iron Lung
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The Iron Lung
Haunting in the shadows from the Fifties' years
turning up for unexpected shock,
why does it recapture all my hidden fears,
whether having known its ways or not?
Panic pulsates deeply in the iron lung,
phobia that swells from feet to neck.
Man and machine working as a rhythmic one,
encasing all but head to chasten death.
Huge, steel, 800 pound, drum respirator,
imagine a hundred crowded in a room.
Many once depended on this life saver.
Without the giant monster, they’d be doomed.
The sight of it was used in cheap subversive ads
by a world so vile that scared some little kid
into receiving polio shots they had to have
or face the suffocating fate that others did.
Dark pictures live in furrows of my mind
with the onset of no other phobic blow.
The helpless sight of someone so confined
may be the frightful truth that vexes so.
8/13/17
Copyright © Janis Thompson | Year Posted 2017
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