By Simon Thompson
The air is warm and dry, it has been like this since lockdown,
Spring has sprung un-noticed, a jack-in-the-box in an empty room,
slipping through the anonymous days, to arrive here at now;
the Sun nudging along the broken, tired hours,
each of those stuffed with pimento minutes, sharp and tart, dominoes of time,
carefully stacked in their millions,
patiently waiting to fall, if pushed.
My moon face at the unwashed window a portal to another World,
one familiar, and yet not; what once were certainties becoming doubts,
truths lies, significance only detail,
todays surprise is a Blackbird carrying worms,
a mundane marvel.
i have a walk, The walk, the allowed hour, the daily ration, a circuit,
each lap an I-Spy book,
a Five Go-Covid adventure,
ticking, scoring, a child’s blithe catalogue of daffodils, nettles,
orange-tips, small torts, yaffles, chiffies,
pre-ordained but still miraculous,
the track a diaspora of cyclists spreading out, tinkling their bells, mimicking goldfinch,
rehearsing past youth, uncontrolled, tiresome as flies, infectious.
Without rain the path is white, umbilical, knotting, some sense into this
chronology of chaos, linking life with half-life, winding round the
post-flooded fields, in this age of Plagues,
it will be Drought next no doubt,
then self-herding home.