Sunday, 18 April 2021

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


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