Twenty
Celebrations put on ice: like a patient lying on a
trolley. Unmoving. Play dates, for young and old,
pencilled in for another day: ‘when this is all over’.
The daily score. Government graphs that rise
and rise, like lofty spires; each one, unwelcome,
a steep stairway to heaven.
Supermarkets: imagined threats, fear of
shortages, empty the shelves of people’s brains,
the zeroes registering behind eyes of jealous
customers.
Time on our hands – too much for some to fill –
rattling empty spaces or bouncing off the walls
of the thirteenth floor.
Weasel words, truths and untruths shift and
fuse, like quicksands that serve to confuse. Firm
exceptions made - Cummings and goings – like
the man himself, repel.
Empty stages, pages of lines unlearned and left
stage right – the ghosts of past performances
daring to whisper, their voices, lost,
echoing through The Gods.
We wrestle - no touch - with the idea of …no
touch. Do we have the measure of distance –
donning the mantle of social dimension as never
before?
The old -old people – diminished memories their
only protection - left to shrink and fade.
Betrayed, by…who, and why? Left to die.
The schools – the children – bubbles of a very
different sort that do not float from place to
place or reflect delight in the eyes of the small;
but separate, as sure as walls of steel.
Choirs lose their voice, their songs and arias
wrapped up and boxed, stamped as dangerous
to the public good.
The motorway hushed and empty. Cars and
lorries packed away, in a scene from days long
gone, to come out another day.
Long summer days, sunshine carried on the
wings of friendly winds, the jet- stream bent
high above the clear blue skies.
Distant Spanish island: its pocket picked,
February sunshine stolen, and smuggled home
to flood months later from glossy holiday snaps.
Four chairs, surround a table where once there
were only two – unscheduled family meals,
diverting chat, swapping stories an unexpected
bonus.
Swifts swoop high and low, an aerial display, a
masterclass that fill the skies now that the
planes have gone – their tails a V-sign to the
kites.
Time to read… then read some more. To settle
into the comfortable familiarity of a favourite
chair, to start, and read until the end.
Acts of kindness, selflessness played out on
every scale – in quiet solitude or trumpeted on
the national stage.
New heroes – dressed now not in khaki nor
draped in capes of red, but clad in scrubs, or
whites, or simple homespun tweed.
Fitter than for years – circuits in the garden,
press-ups, pull-ups, never ever give ups, brisk
evening walks fuelled by talk about the this and
that of lockdown.
Neighbours, rarely seen together, stand socially
distanced shoulder to shoulder, to clap the NHS
with hands, and pans, to let them know their
sacrifice has not gone unnoticed.
So, at the end of this year
With questions aplenty
What score would I give it?
Say… ten out twenty?