A poet wrote about the
Spanish Influenza pandemic
of 1918-19 and how it
affected lives in a small,
southern town. He thought
about how it affected his
life in a big, northern
city. His grandfather
succumbed to the dread
disease when his father
was thirteen, leaving his
father an immigrant orphan;
his father succumbed to the
dreaded death of suicide
when he, his son, was seven-
teen; he, the grandson and
son, almost succumbed to
the same dreaded death when
his wife succumbed at age
forty-nine, but didn’t…
and the long, ugly arm of
tragic, premature succumb-
ing, which had reached down
through the generations,
finally retreated back into
its big, dark, deadly sleeve
for awhile.