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Covid Thoughts 3: Free Fall
We float spreadeagled in the sky
Lifted and pulled by vague winds
Invisible currents.
Above us the receding plane
a speck
hidden by cloud.
As we fall,
Burnt cinders of news
Sparks brightened by the wind
Circle us.
Gradually we shift uneasily together
Reach
Touch
And lock hands.
Our frail parachutes open
and we lose our grip
Still descending
towards an uncertain earth
Separate,
Yet together.
Covid thoughts 2: Warmth
Everyone
Seems suddenly warmer,
Closer,
More connected,
Despite hugs
giving way to
elbow bumps
giving way to
little waves,
giving way to
masks
and distance.
The wish to be close
Coiled in every muscle.
I would never have believed
I could survive
five weeks
without the merest touch of another human being.
And not be desolate.
But I can.
Because I know
The warmth is still there
Deep
in the heart.
Covid thoughts. Birdsong
I am at the moment working on the libretto of a new oratorio we have been commissioned to write about this surreal experience. To help me imagine my way into it, I am intending to write a poem a day about different aspects of the experience. These poems are just thinking aloud; inching towards finding out what I want to write about. But I thought I may as well post them as I go along.
I sit
Book on knee
In a green
Dream.
Branches between blue
Clench
Into bud.
High
Sweet,
Calling birds.
Filling the sky,
the trees,
the wind,
the world.
Beating against my closed eyelids.
Halloween
Feet crunching up a deserted drive
winding
through tangled shrubbery.
House silent
in the empty mist.
An owl,
disturbed,
passing.
From an upper window
a shadow stares.
All that is left
of someone
who once
lived.
Mary’s Song
These are the lyrics to a new carol Jools and I were commissioned to write for the children’s choir at Bath Abbey. The music is wonderful.
There were many things in my mind when I wrote them. Foremost was not the nativity, but the later Mary, running for her life with her baby. Like the Kurdish women, and all the other fugitives across the world.
Sleep my darling, sleep my little one;
Toes curled gentle in my hand.
Sleep my darling, sleep my little one,
Stranger in a stranger’s land.
In the wind
The snow is blowing
Dancing in the
Winter air..
Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,
Do not fear the winter’s cold.
Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,
Child in a world grown old.
In the wind
The snow is blowing
Every crystal
Fragile, rare..
Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,
I am watching over you.
Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,
You will make the world anew.
Sleep..
Sleep…
Sleep…
In the wind
The snow is blowing
Dancing in the
Winter air..
D Day
Spring
I shiver in a green garden
Hoping for butterflies.
State of the World
Steward, there isn’t enough ice in my Martini!
Coming right up, Ma’am!