By Moira Garland
Time
a hay(na)ku
Dark
blue pillowcase
yellow towel blowing
in mild breezes heavy
branch acting as washing line
prop artfully crafted by woodsmen last
spring looking back only one year already
moved by the grieving gurgle of the pigeon.
Moira Garland lives by a beck on the outskirts of a Yorkshire city. She has been widely published, most recently in When all this is over (Calder Valley Press).
Twitter: @moiragauthor And occasionally: www.wordswords_moirag.blogspot.com
In April I surprised myself by writing a poem almost every day as part of the NaPoWriMo challenge. Surprise because my poetry needs both isolation and regular contact with people close to me, and others, and my lockdown has been – and still is –accompanied only by the cat. Human touch has been confined to a few medical visits and a stretched out hand to my son. This poem is just one moment contemplating mood swings and feelings of stasis that have afflicted so many of us. At the same time I could watch natural elements and online reports, listen to socially-distanced stories from neighbours, and from friends’ ‘garden visits’. Eventually I found joy in Zoom events. There were times when it was necessary for mental well-being to switch off from considering the people suffering with Covid-19 or worrying who might be next.
Covid daze (understated pun!) capture the swings of mood and feeling with the contrast of those with freedom to move and those who are confined. I wonder if it would have more power if you replaced ‘we’ with ‘I’?
Appreciating wild garlic as I do, it is interesting to see your imagination at work on the passing walkers, linking their lives with the films which pass the time in lockdown.
Time: well-disciplined description of a rural garden. It inspired me to try the form.
Thank you.
Thank you Veronica
Lovely, Moira, especially Covid Daze. You capture the extremities of 2020 life very well. And “children dying to go to school”… Beautiful and brutal.
Moira – you’ve really captured the ups and downs of lockdown really well in the first poem and I love the clever use of film titles in the second to demonstrate human behaviour in these distressing times
Thanks Jenny 🙂
Thank you.