By Angela Mckean
In dreams I am a small black kite.
I soar, nest, preen and drift
as smoky thermals lift me where they will.
I have no thoughts. Hunting for food
I hover over Delhi’s dumpsters, landfills.
I angle slowly down to earth.
Cries rise to meet me, seared
with pain. I do not recognise
this anguished city.
I try to land, but every branch is gone.
Amputated, stacked in fiery pyres.
I fall to earth
and wake. My room emerges palely from the dark.
I’m tethered to my bed, snared into consciousness.
I cry out, wingless, and afraid.
Based in Northumberland, I often write on themes of ambiguity and the liminal – the borderlands of the mind. I have had poems and stories published in regional and national magazines.
Lockdown seems to distil and intensify my emotions, about everything really. It been hard to make sure my feelings infuse but don’t overwhelm my writing. But writing in lockdown has allowed me to leave home in my imagination, and go wherever the writing takes me, which is a great privilege, I think. A poem then becomes an offering to whoever needs or wants it.