HOME TIME
The ditches along Duttons Lane have been full
much of March – because February-fill-dyke
was mostly dry, almost Spring for days.
The glinting water is dark as black tea,
brown as bitter beer. Along Acres Lane
the hawthorn hedgerows are beginning to green.
We park as near the school as we can.
The leafy lane is overflowing with song.
As we walk through the green security gates
a westerly wind brings the roars of lions
from the zoo nearby. We join the others
waiting – a social mix, and mainly white.
The daily Beluga flies overhead
with parts from Toulouse for Airbus wings
to be built at Broughton. The handcart
we may go to Hell in will be well designed!
But she appears, our quotidian
messiah, the unexpected grandchild
to redeem us in our eld, our dotage.
How she inundates our doting hearts,
makes us merry with love!
Sarah Selzer
March 27, 2020Very prescient – and what we’d give to see the Beluga flying over now! At the end of this first week of home schooling and social distancing in earnest, it’s good to hang on to the memory of normal times, so thank you G’pa! xxx
John Huddart
March 31, 2020Poems from a pre-Covid era. Innocent, rich, and full of love. And here we are in a John Wyndham novel, waiting for the Triffids to march through.
Alan Horne
April 2, 2020I like ‘Hell’s well-designed handcart’. Very quotable!
Mary Clark
April 6, 2020Any social mix will do now. Longing, waiting for the surge and apex. A new world makes the old one look innocent in 2020 vision.