A very simple moment recorded today – how quickly the spring races ahead now. Soon, all will be full-leaved, and slow, but now, it seems things grow almost before your eyes. What is even more disconcerting is how, if you’ve been watching something, and then turn your back, everything changes.

It’s a reminder of the passage of time, like how much taller the children we know will seem when we see them again. How different things may be after this time.

These Lockdown Poems are turning into a record of the spring, sometimes moment by moment. And tomorrow, Friday 15th May, you’ll be able to hear me read one of this band of poems on Radio 3’s The Verb. I’m feeling a little excited, and also nervous, but mainly awed by the opportunity to contribute something to our shared experience …..

Here, a sudden green Lockdown Poems 12

How did the silver birches grow
so green so quickly?
the stems of the rambling rose
lost now in all those tiny leaves –
those yellow catkins.

Now a tree in leaf,
yesterday, it seems,
a tree in bud,
and here, too,
the acacia, like
a yellow maidenhair fern,
shook out in the breeze,
so suddenly, so suddenly,
after a winter of waiting.