Heading into 2021, the news was hard to listen to and so an escape had to be found

When this is all over

 

When this is all over, I am going to London.

I’m catching the Megabus,

where we’ll sit together, touching heads

and planning our weekend.

 

 

I will not mind the smell of McDonalds,

Kentucky Fried Chicken or a Pizza Hut

floating about the bus.

It’s better than the stench of coronavirus.

 

We will chase down into the tubes

of London,

and be spewed up at our destination,

like a tube of toothpaste.

 

We will not care about touch,

link our arms so we don’t lose each other and

we will share a room without masks.

Distancing will be but a memory.

 

When all this is over, we will buy new coats

in a store where the changing rooms are open and

cram our old coats into careless backpacks.

Ready for London!

 

We will dance at a musical,

be touched by a movie star,

have cocktails at the bar

when this is all over.

 

 

23/01/2021

Sparrow - delicate little birds, life can be fragile for them. As Winter 2020 drew in, human lives became ever more so.

SPARROW

 

Immersed in music

my Southmead sparrows, constant companions

through all of 2020 became a flight of beauty.

 

And I thought

do they have Vivaldi as a soundtrack

in those tiny feathered heads.

 

Urgent, beating wings

unstoppable movement, settling

for such short moment.

Then the flight, soaring up as one bird.

 

They zoom to the ground

in urgent attention to peck

anxiously around 

and

 

all the while a lookout,

scans their small horizon

for the predator who stalks their world.

 

I too live in fear at this time

of an imagined or real demon

and now I understand the twitch

and shiver of sparrows.

 

When life is fragile and threat lies

all around.

 

This poem came in Autumn 2020, when we had a breathing space, numbers were down and we had a chance to look back.

Looking back

 

We were heedless, still, of the salt taste of the winds.

News trickled from a distant country, it wore a mask to confuse us and

we did not recognise it.

 

People ordered to stay home,

come out for essentials but nothing else.

We watched on our screens, with tea and popcorn

gripped by the new blockbuster.

 

Of course, this would not happen to us with

our lives in the west, hard fought freedoms and

precious wealth.  Look at the PM shake hands.

 

But the saltyness found a way.

Determined, clinging as a limpet clings.

We were too late to prise it off and

a lethal net cast itself wide.

 

While our eyes were watching this thing on screen

in it crept,

millions, billion, trillions of nuclear beads.

Took aim, without judgement.

 

Slamming into our souls,

questioning our heritage,

taking prisoners and killing without prejudice.

 

Where will we go from here…