Two Poems

By Mark Kirkbride

Strange Juncture: No Man’s Land, 2020-21

Beyond the wheat fields, a city
plots a staircase against the sky
or a graph, its windows on fire
in the sun’s rich rays, each distinct
as if up close in fever dreams
when wrong-end-of-the-telescope
minute. Trunk roads radiate out,
empty. Clouds on the horizon
rise like baked bread. Heavy seed heads
shush but the air sizzles with insects
zipping back and forth, left, right. Wrens
sing in trees, joined by a blackbird
in the humming, buzzing silence.

Creature Comforts

Motorway quiet…
Coffee pings! Feeding station
twangs with squirrels, birds.

Mark Kirkbride is the author of The Plot Against Heaven, Game Changers of the Apocalypse (a semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Awards 2019) and Satan’s Fan Club

I tried to find something positive that came out of Covid. Confined to home, we noticed things more, and nature bounced back. 

Like nature, poetry, both writing and reading it, can be a great source of solace during challenging times.