Tag: covid poetry

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Corona

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It isn’t just the my right eyelid twitches

Or that sleep is a rumour started by people

Who could probably be found snoring standing

Up or in the middle of lunch or by the roadside

In ditches. It isn’t even that I don’t enjoy

Making Nonograms fifteen by fifteen in bed

At 2am or 4 or somewhere in between. It’s also

Not a huge deal that that my eyes get heavy and 

I sometimes collapse headfirst into a meal. It’s

Just that sleep is supposed to knit the raveled sleeve

Of care and maybe its twiddling the knitting needles

Over its thumbs because it can’t find the wool 

Of the lamb that is worried threadbare.

Dearly Beloved

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We are gathered here in spirit and in

Spirit only. The body of death eludes us

Now as it promises to do after the 

Holding close denied the heart. This

Holding apart of love and death, this

Mourning denied the touch of breath,

This burying of presence, this closing

Of the eyes howsoever brief, this 

Standing before the burning pyres

Of the cleaved body of grief is gathered

Here, in our empty hands, dearly beloved,

Gathered here. Our empty hands. 

Courage #9 – Still Life: A lockdown poem

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The trick lies in the highlights
You set them in strong. Pure
Dazzling bright whites. To shoulder
The weight of the darks. Take care
To register what you see only. Not
What you know is there. The shape
Of all seen through each, shapes
The sense of all.
Stillness lies in the eye of the beholder.
Things move apart to come together again.
The beauty is all in the transitions
The glow the shimmer the shine the glitter
The overlay of time on space. And when
Memory is all there is to work from
There is still life still colour still observance
Still courage in grace.

A Table of Contents

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I hadn’t seen the house. He hadn’t seen
The table. We were buying momentous
Things for a future in which we’d never
Been. “Bigger,” he said, “tell them to make it
Wider and longer!” “Where will we place it?”
I said, looking at the dimensions he’d sent us.
But the size of a table depends on more than
How many sit. My parents knew – if you
Build it they will come. And we did. Their
Table held more than ever lived in that
House. There was always room, food,
Conversation. And now we live in self-
Isolation. And the too-big table draws
Together our meagre four – with our
Violins, our laptops, our books, tools, papers
Our cat, puzzles, painting projects – more,
In fact, a binding and gathering of ourselves
To ourselves, a tabling of a core.