She Breathes

Written for Paul Brookes' ekphrastic challenge - one poem a day in April 2021. 

The art work for this day are by Jane Cornwell, "Barmston looking from Fraisethorpe" by John Law, and "Distances" by Kerfe Roig 

 

She Breathes

 

deeply through the mask,
fixes her visor one more time;

another day, another thankless task

for unknown lives laid on the line

and in her hands. 

 

She pulls

on another pair of soulless gloves

and closes eyes long drained of tears

for all the hurt and absent love

that will scar so many future years

and recalls the sands

as she awakes
on cliffs above the curving coast

and tastes the ocean in her mind

where ten thousand swirling ghosts

float with her, endlessly entwined

on a fine-spun strand

She returns

to flourescence, bustling noise,

as seascapes smear and snap the thread,

and vows to fight all that destroys

her memory of the gasping dead

of this blighted land.

Tim Fellows 2021

Undertaker

Written during the coronavirus lockdown.

Undertaker

There was only the faintest sound
of sobbing. It was cold that day,
as when Towton saw so many dead.
Soon, he hoped, when this is done,
things will return to as they were.
When he could deal with tumours, hearts
that stopped in shock. The mangled flesh
and bone, the aged
and those who chose to die.

They sat in separate pews, the broken
widow and the stoic son. No comfort,
no loving touch. An impotent priest.

This plague had come to his house,
the cross was on his door.


Tim Fellows April 2020

Image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay

Collecting

Collecting

In lockdown, he had more time
to view his collection.
To remember the lonely
teenage hours spent searching
for an elusive flash of colour.
Or in the dim light of his study,
carefully attaching them, pinning
his hopes and dreams
on Red Admirals,
Swallowtails, Cabbage Whites,
Commas, Brimstones
and Holly Blues.

He dwelt on all
that was wasted,
a life as sterile
as the delicate dead things
so carefully labelled,
so scrupulously catalogued.


Tim Fellows April 2020

Image by flohrflohr from Pixabay

Numbers

Written during the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020. When we see the numbers rising, we can forget that each one is loved. 

Just a few of the NHS workers who died as a result of the virus

Numbers

Every number is a face
that will not feel the morning sun

Every number is a breath
that will not catch a favourite scent

Every number is a heart
that beat out time and loved and cared

Every number is one more
that grows the graph we see each day

Every number is a man,
a woman, child who once was loved

with face, with heart, with skin and brain
that will not share their love again.


Tim Fellows 2020