As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am writing during this lockdown – as a way of expressing something, as a way of grounding myself in the physical experience of where I am, of keeping some kind of a record of what this time feels like, which is very different from what watching the news feels like, at least for me.  What emerges from this practice is simple, free, unpolished.

My notebook comes with me into the garden, and so it’s to the garden that I invite you now, especially if you are in a place where you have no view of green growing things, and hear no birdsong. I am aware how fortunate I am to have such a place, and how much harder it is to navigate this time without sight of spring.  So I hope that, as I share these poems with you, you can come outside in your imagination, and sit on the bench, and rest awile in the sun.

Today – sound.  
Lockdown poems 1

Today, it is quiet.
Cars, if they pass at all,
come one by one, strung out,
separate,
dark beads running along
a dark thread.
The old sound comes, and goes,
comes, and goes.

Here, today, in this green space,
we hear, instead, the buzz of
long-tongued bees, feasting
and drunk among the primroses.
Primroses, spilling yellow,
everywhere, in the lawn
on which a faint dark
line threads – the path
of a soft deer
who comes by night.
And above, now,
buzzards and hawks
have the high sky to themselves,
flying in their wide circles.

I hear now, as if for the first time,
full birdsong, triumphant, liberated.
Suddenly an audience has turned
from its spent tables
towards this wide green stage,
and listened, amazed,
as loud song rises louder,
louder, knowing it will be heard.