Someone has suggested that I put these two poems on my blog. They are both somewhat downbeat, or even melancholy, as befits the mood when writing them. As this blog is now more irregular in its offerings, I feel able to do so.

Please keep safe and well and my thanks to everyone helping in whatever way to fight this pandemic.

Covid-19

How ironic that

We looked at never ending rain

Through sullen windows.

Just to view the sun through self-same panes

 

For, now most must not do more

Than look; don’t touch.

An almost silent spring.

Where hidden sounds emerge.

 

Was that a woodpecker’s drill?

Unheard before the clamour

Of our streets had died away

To stillness and serenity.

 

Social media replaces

Print, and nails the coffin

Of the daily newspaper

We have loved?

 

What words will disappear, so

Bandwith, router, social distance

Can appear in dictionaries?

Not curfew, coroner, shielding

Now brought back to use.

 

We fumble forward

Turning freedom on its head.

Still unwilling to surrender

Liberty for lockdown.

 

Where will we go?

We do not know.

The end from this beginning

Changes every day.

 

27^th March 2020

Fears remain the same

The casual swipe of death

Pierces life’s sunset pattern.

Breaking comfort and order

Through sudden phone or text

 

We wish we’d never answered.

Such modern telegrams

Of isolated death.

Apart from loved ones.

 

Missing as former warriors

Lost in battlefields.

Lovers die surrounded

As they were, by

 

Acquaintances, but

Rarely family or friends.

This war, building daily,

To reflect the biggest battle yet.

 

No funeral for these fallen,

Taken ahead of time.

Buried with scant ceremony,

To await a future remembrance.

 

Private grief, without even

Neighbours solace offered.

But, by phone or email;

Too hard to read.

 

What will time heal?

As yet, we do not know.

But, hope eternal springs,

From life’s indomitable spirit.