Ergot Weather

July in Portland: gloomy overcast
and drizzle, cool and wet. The rivers run
at record highs, and damn, that grass grows fast--
but soaking seedheads molder without sun.
It's years like this when field-rotted grain
spawns ergot madness, invisible blight
that taints the harvest. People go insane
from eating bread. Sometimes they die of fright.
Sometimes the sequelae include starvation,
hysteria, witchhunts and desperate plots
all from humidity and fungal contagion.
The worst I have to fear-- well, Heaven knows
it's less than lethal. Just unsightly blots
of powdery mildew on a prizewinning rose.

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