Somebody must look for rainbows
under leaden skies –
work furloughed, playgrounds empty,
plans cancelled, there’s no excuse.
We’ve read, drew and danced
cooked and home-schooled
played on the iPad
streamed and then…
we stopped.
Continue reading “Somebody Must”
The shadow of Coronavirus has suffocated the world. But as a physically disabled woman, the world has opened up for me.
With a squeeze of a button I see National Theatre productions on YouTube. Daily I have rediscovered Melissa Etheridge rocking from home. Jason Byrne is sweating workouts through Instagram; I have dusted off my dumbbells and he is inspiring my exercise. I have collaborated with Gary Lightbody, beaming from his LA rental. I run a book club through Zoom; isn’t it interesting to see other people’s décor? Normally I cannot access their homes.
The clerics stood
commanding, demanding, unending
the old walls stood
supporting, surrounding, upstanding.
The lonely figure stood
courageously, stoically, outrageously
with pride and honour and defiance.
Continue reading “The Longest Day of the Year”
Here it is…
A finger on the pause button
– A figurative spoke in the wheel
Our lives on hold
Whilst we await release
This is not a love song, a love poem or a love note
It is a list;
a way to organise things inside my head
I do insist we never kissed
Or saw each other naked
Or made dinner together
Or watched nights break across days
None of the above
Continue reading “The List”
I was never a musical child. As the saying goes, I couldn’t even carry a tune in a bucket. Once, in my twenties, I bought a tin whistle and a book of folk songs with music, and I tried to pick out tunes in that.
Music theory was a locked book. I did not have the key. I did not even have a clue what a key was.
The other day I was sitting
and I said to the wife
We are all now starting
a different life
The Chinese or a Bat
who ever’s to blame
Between you and me
it all is the same
Ancestors of myth yet unmade,
Dreamers, & the children of dreamers
As some of you may or may not know, I have recently self-published my second book of a trilogy ‘The Blossom or The Bole’. Book 1 was a huge success in 2017, so with encouragement of the amazing reviews from my readers and my fellow writers I embarked on writing Book 2 in 2018.
I had often heard of writers block but had never experienced it until I quite literally lost the plot halfway through. I was on the brink of giving up altogether.
Her pen poised over the card. Did people send these any more? What about Snapchat or Tick Tock whatever that was? She doubted he was on those.
She just wanted a connection. In lockdown she felt adrift, lost amid a sea of people in trapped in tiny houses, thrown this way and that on a never-ending tsunami. When the children left, they had been so busy, him commuting to the city, her with her all-consuming job. Having such a big house didn’t help. She thought of the early years struggle to pay the mortgage, for what? Lots of space now to keep apart in.
