APRIL FOOLS

Social distancing is one of the many new phrases to have entered our lexicon since Covid-19 became a global pandemic and we all know what the practice means even if some foolish people don’t adhere to it. 

Whilst on our daily exercise outings, Jane and I frequently encounter other walkers and our behaviour towards one another is reflected in this lighthearted poem.  

The poem's also a respectful nod to the memory of the great English poet and former Poet Laureate,  William Wordsworth, who was born in the month of April.  

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS

On foot, on bicycles, they pass

too close. 

We shrink away 

but smile to hide embarrassment 

that we regard them 

as a threat to health

while they smile back, 

embarrassed too,

for having caused the grave offence

of straying too much in our path. 

Such strange politenesses become

the norm 

in these peculiar times

of virus and of virus-fear.

Whereas last autumn 

we’d have passed

a group of others unremarked,

this spring 

we mumble greetings, wave,

and even cyclists get a nod.

A kind of mutuality

has sprung up with the daffodils:

no longer lonely as a cloud,

we have acquired new social skills. 

BATTLE LINES

As of today’s date, the UK has recorded 129,044 cases of coronavirus with 17,337 deaths. Upwards of 90 NHS staff have died of the virus while ministering to the sick.

The picture below, coupled with the images invoked by Wilfred Owen's war poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, inspired my poem, NHS, which you can read below.

The italicised lines at the start are Owen's words. The title of his poem, in turn, uses the words, in Latin, of the Roman poet, Horace. 

NHS

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning …

The ward is a war-zone, a battlefield

where daily dies our confidence, 

our grounds for hope, our energy.

Each start of shift, we rise to face

an enemy whose strength exceeds

our fearful expectations.

Poorly equipped, still we advance,

driven by our integrity,

while, on all sides, the dying plunge

downward through a corrupted sea,

their last breaths greenly frothing out  

from choked throats as they spiral down.

Our masters moralise and watch,

hand-wringing as the casualties

increase in numbers day by day.

Spruce Generals, they spend hours with charts 

while we must soldier on each day.

To those who fill the wards, the sick,

for whom there is scant hope, we fight,

but these are not good deaths, instead

men thrash in panic towards the end

as a green sea invades their lungs.

We do our utmost, still they die,

the old, the hardly old, the young.

Through night-shift trenches, barbed-wire days,

we grimly trudge, barely awake,

round-shouldered, prematurely old,

towards our shift-end scrubbing-down,

a brief respite and restless rest.

The virus takes no prisoners

and those it spares are subtly changed:

their swagger gone, they rise each day 

aware of their fragility

while, night and morning, we return,

dog-tired, to grapple with our fear

because there are no conscripts here.

SECOND SKIN

Memento Mori is an old poem that first appeared in my 2017 collection, Stone Witness. 

It was one of two poems that I submitted last month to Snakeskin, the highly respected international poetry webzine that published one of my short poems, His Room, in its March edition.

To my surprise and pleasure Memento Mori has been chosen to appear in Snakeskin’s April issue which you can access by clicking on this link. 

MEMENTO MORI

An ambulance howls like a hurt cat;
parts traffic as Moses did the waves.

Worms burrow in awaiting graves.

A police car buzzes like a gnat.

Stuck in a jam of steaming cars,

I contemplate how life transforms

in moments. How they wait, those worms,

so patiently, for us, for ours.

TRACK RECORD

As the impact of the coronavirus, Covid-19, continues to dominate our lives, I think many are speculating as to how the world, or at least our own little worlds, might be changed when this emergency has passed. 

The poem, Virus Diary, came about following a recent walk through the area of reclaimed land that overlooks Bordeaux Bay. 

I noticed then that, besides the usual well-trodden paths, there were many new, offshoot tracks that had not been there when I walked in the area several weeks earlier.

Clearly, these fresh paths were the result of people trying to avoid meeting others head-on in order to observe ’social-distancing’. 

I saw these new routes as a metaphor for the way that the virus has forced us to find alternative ways of doing things and wondered whether this type of altered and often adventurous thinking will persist when the present crisis ends.

VIRUS DIARY: TUESDAY



Tuesday, for my permitted exercise,

I walked on reclaimed land above the bay:

a quarry once, then land-fill site, today

the coastal landscape has a different guise.

On hilly, weeded tracks, dog-walkers meet

lone runners, lonely trudgers, retirees,

photographers, birdwatchers, families:

a hearty regiment with marching feet

that, by their constant use, collectively,

have tramped broad paths for everyone to share

and up I went on Tuesday for fresh air,

a lock-down-liberated escapee,

to walk familiar trails and view the bay

with low-tide boats lop-sided all along 

and Brent geese congregated, forty-strong,

Herm island, isolated, far away,

itself in lock-down as the islands are,

obedient to authority’s dictates

to keep coronavirus from our gates:

strange times are these that verge upon bizarre. 

I came upon fresh tracks in that landscape,

departures from old, bland, accustomed routes

as though from a dead tree had sprung green shoots:

new trails, signs of avoidance, of escape.

On impulse, I turned left instead of right,

right was the path I never failed to take,

and found myself attentively awake,

newly alert, my body more upright. 

The view was subtly different because

that small shift of direction made it so.

I stood and watched the tide return from low

up through the bay at Bordeaux as it does 

and wondered, on this reconfigured mound,

if we’d resume our former lives unchanged

or choose, instead, a future rearranged 

and stride ahead on fresh trails newly found.

EASTER WESTERN

All those years ago, we kids would flock to Saturday Matinees in the old Astoria Cinema at Ballyhackamore. There, armed with a packet of Butterkist and a Kiora drink, we'd enjoy the latest Western.
Westerns were our favourite fare at "the pictures" and were often the main feature in a programme that would include a B-Movie, generally a low-budget, black and white, gangster film, some news bulletins and a few cartoons: well worth 6d of anybody's pocket-money.
The main feature, that we kids called "The Big Film", always seemed to end with the granite-chinned hero riding off into the sunset.
That early love of the Western has never left me but, sadly, it's rare to find examples of that genre in the cinema of today.

JERUSALEM

A man rides into town ...

he’s a good man and this used to be a good town 

but the bad guys have taken over 

and the townsfolk are weak 

so it’s a bad town now with bad problems.

The rider will change things. 

Valiantly, he’ll make a stand against hopeless odds. 

He’ll confront the bad guys, 

inspire loyalty, teach the timid townsfolk to confront evil.

You must remember, 

that the odds were hopeless from the start, 

so the bad guys triumph and the rider dies alone in the sun, 

as the townsfolk look on, helpless.

But the movie doesn’t end there.

He shows up three days later, scarred, but charismatic still,

and tells the grieving townsfolk he has to leave 

but will return one day to save them

then he rides into the sunset.

FREE AS A BIRD

This simple poem is an abased form of Circlet, in that it is  made up of a decastich, a 10 line poem made up of 2 cinquains, has a rhyme pattern Abcde edcbA and is composed with line 1 repeated as line 10.

I’ve describe it as ‘abased’ because it lacks the traditional syllabic content.

Image by R Kikuo Johnston

QUARANTINE

The sparrow, unconcerned, builds on:

a feather here, a piece of straw,

a supple twig, these things and more

are gathered, carried, knitted tight

inside the wood-box on the wall,

while we sit indoors and recall

how things once were, when we too might,

should we so choose, step out the door

but now it is against the law.

The sparrow, unconcerned, builds on.

EVERY LITTLE THING'S GONNA BE ALL RIGHT!

I wrote this short story, more of a flash fiction really, a few years ago and am posting it today as an excuse to link to two Bob Marley songs, one the title of the story and the other, Three Little Birds, a feel-good song to lift our spirits in these unhappy times.
Click here for Three Little Birds and here for One Love.
Stay safe. Stay well. Stay positive.   

ONE LOVE

One love! One heart! Let’s get together and feel all right ... 

Shel mimed Bob Marley’s words to the musical ringtone of her fiancee’s mobile as the distinctive jingle sounded and Dave began jabbering to his mate about arrangements for the away-match that weekend. 

One love! Shel smiled and thought about the boys she’d known before. She’d thought herself in love with some of them but not like this, not like it was with Dave: one love, one love forever.

They’d been together three years: a passionate affair that now had reached the mellow stage. Their lovemaking, wild and reckless in the beginning, had become a familiar, twice-weekly ritual. Shel was content, but sometimes thought wistfully of those raunchy sessions up on Mortlake Hill in the old ruined barn. It was blissful up there, high above the town, their own private Eden, where the air was crisp and invigorating, far from people and prying eyes. God, they’d made the earth move, she and Dave, back then.

Saturday came, she packed his sandwiches, promised to have his favourite supper ready when he got home. He was meeting his mate, Sam, at the station.

Three o’clock, Shel turned on the radio: the match was live. She thought of him, just another anonymous face in the crowd, but special to her, so special. One love!

Just thinking about Dave made her tingle. Bored, and on impulse, she decided to take a walk up Mortlake Hill to get some air: perhaps recapture the magic that seemed somehow missing from their life together nowadays.

The afternoon was warm and Shel, dressed in fleece and jeans, set off up the hill. Approaching its summit, she felt exhilarated and full of energy. 

As she passed the ruins of the old barn, she glimpsed movement: a figure, no two figures, half-clothed, darted out of sight behind the stone facade.

Shel smiled. Young lovers in our old love-nest, she thought. Bet I know what they’re up to, and who can blame them: it’s the perfect spot for a bit of the old al fresco. I’ll tell Dave: get him hot and sexy for tonight.

Snatching out her smartphone, Shel called Dave’s number.

After a moment’s wait, a familiar ringtone sounded from the ruined barn. 

One love! One heart! Let’s get together and feel all right ....