Lockdown Poems

Planting

I planted the seeds

Into the dirt around the tree stump

Still sap-bleeding out its last

 

Where in a few hours

Children will linger to play, as anxious parents

Try in vain to hurry them past

 

Leaning heavy on the railings -

Already exhausting the dry last dregs

Of a morning’s first caffeine

 

As rows of parked cars

Let the engines choke their low murmur

Though it might wake you.

 

But I didn’t come in

Past the gate hanging slightly away

From its post, and swung open

 

In the crisp early wind

That must have blown the leaves down

Treading the season underfoot

 

I planted the seeds

Beneath the moss and the pebbled soil

Kicked up by foxes

 

Scratching for a meal

In all that we leave behind, still

Perhaps they’ll leave

 

These just where they are

Since they’re no good for them really

Or even for us, yet,

 

You not knowing

And I not willing to tell what the earth

Conceals in its silence.

 

If the frost comes

It could all have been for nothing, of course,

And you’d never see

 

The saplings take root

Bursting their confines and driving upwards

To light, and heat, and life

 

I planted the seeds

Asking nothing of them, and holding no expectation

Of what might grow

It's Quieter Now

It’s quieter now than it was

Days folding into evenings

Drifting into nights without

Marking time

 

Your old Roberts radio still

Hugs the wall, sky blue and gold,

Part-submerged in discarded papers

Stacked around

 

But I only turn it on now

For the dog, when we leave

Her to Classic FM and dreams

Of the chase

 

& when it rains (and how it rains)

We often forget on return

Till we hear Turandot broken

By whimpers.

 

You won’t be surprised at my

Absentmindedness - I forget

More than I recall these days

Or feel so

 

Dragging muddy footsteps across

The off-white carpet we chose

When we moved here, all those

Years ago,

 

But safe knowing it’ll come out

With a bit of heat and effort

So long as we leave it to dry

For a while

 

Elsewhere we’ve made bigger changes

It doesn’t look as it did, I’m sure,

Walls have moved and there are brass

Kitchen taps

 

(I didn’t resent the taps, really.

I’m just not sure I understood

What it meant to have a vision

Of a place)

 

And in the end it’s the taps, not

The footprints or the echoes of

Familiar sounds of a house when it

Was a home

 

That will last and speak to who

We were that lived here once. But

It’s quieter now so I can try to imagine

Who that was

Father's Day

The sharp click-clack of keys

Echoes from behind a door

The sound of work, as I imagined,

Of industry, of imagination

Made form into delicate stacks

Perched around

But that was thirty years since

Maybe more, though my memory

Gets a little hazy as we rewind

The tape from rich technicolour

Decaying into faded sepia and finally

Black and white

Like watching one’s moral education

Forced backwards till everything

Is neat binaries again: right and wrong;

Good and bad; with no soft padding

In between to buffer ourselves from

Our conscience.

All these steps taken in learning to walk,

I have trodden with you, leaning

At times to borrow of your strength

And at others offering a hand to

Keep us both on this path headed

Nowhere but forwards

Still the click-clack of keys resounds

Although its source is long since

Abandoned by the wayside, it yet

Marks the time of our lockstep

Reminding us that the past is never dead.

It’s not even past.