visceral
  
The watering holes are contaminated
animals stagger, wounded and wounding
strangling bewildered, keening cries - 
there is word of a stranger in the village
 
spreading like lengthening shadows
spilling into once safe, sunlit spaces
splotchy-blotchy, blemishing news
as expected as a natural disaster
 
all is wet with fear of the unknown
sky and earth quake and thunder
before the hard truth of a presence:
the beloved has found another.