David Selzer is a writer of poetry, prose fiction, screenplays and stage plays. He embraces digital platforms to share his work of more than fifty years… READ MORE


  • A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION

    In a local church hall we wait,  with fellow

    ancients, for our first Pfizer vaccination.

    Ours is a generation that has received,

    since childhood, the blessings of technology

    and science. Though the glitter ball

    is stationary and the stage curtains drawn

    there are shades still of dancing and pantomimes –

    and, in the observation tent outside,

    the fifteen minutes is quite jolly,

    definitely determined. We humans are

    social animals, prone to good causes.

     

    We drive home in warm, tawny sunlight.

    “A lovely day!” you say. “Please sing the song!”

    I urge, and you do. ‘This is my lovely day.

    This is the day I shall remember

    the day I’m dying…’ And, tearful, I see you,

    in the chorus, when we were students,

    more than half a century ago.

     

     

     

     


    6 responses to “A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION”


    1. Mary Clark Avatar

      Comedy and joy and sadness too when we get our vaccines. I’m glad you’ve had yours. Mine was postponed but coming up in March now. I’ve heard some people cry after they’ve had the shot. But singing makes more sense, if we can make sense of all this.

    2. Ferne Braudel Avatar
      Ferne Braudel

      You do have a tendency to merge naive and sentimental poetry. The comparative credibility between having a Pfizer jab and the nostalgic re-imagining of your wife as a Vaudeville chorus girl is somewhat discordant and overstated. Have vaccinations always had this effect on you?

      1. David Selzer Avatar

        Not normally, no! Are you, by any chance, related to the French historian, Fernand Bradel?

    3. Ferne Braudel Avatar
      Ferne Braudel

      Only illegitimately.

    4. Tim Davenport Avatar
      Tim Davenport

      Echoes of BIRTHDAY GIRL… – ‘We are an innovative species…and stoical’.

    5. Jeff Teasdale Avatar

      Will we be saying “do you remember the day you got your jab?” in years to come? The day when political spin was actually eclipsed by good people and ‘experts’ and the curtain from behind which we have been peering for months, opened a little wider. Not a village hall in our case, but our local pharmacy in Macclesfield, where ‘Andrew’ has always been several steps ahead. His pharmacy was once the rough estate pub, with a huge black barking dog patrolling its flat roof. Four vaccination stations, mine in one of the clean white back rooms which, as a pub, one could only guess what previously happened in there. “Wow, this is nice, Andrew!” ..”Thanks. Did you ever come in here when it was a pub?” … “Only the once” … “Me too…”…… Thanks, David, for reminding us that the rest of our lives are a little closer.

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