POEMS FOR THE PANDEMIC
By W. Scobie
A funeral
Eight chairs
Set far apart.
Strangers sit in silence.
Then refusing
To shake a mourner’s hand
– Her son.
God forgive me.
As though her death
Was not grief enough,
This ritual,
This torment of the soul,
There must be these
More morbid shades
Of the unspoken.
Returning to the car
As a leper
To my children
In fear of some stray breath,
Some pestilential droplet
– A kiss of death.
* * *
Masks and metres,
The few who distance
And the many who don’t.
Hostile eyes
Asking you what your problem is.
Pharmacy.
Lines and arrows on the floor
And staff who do not see the broken rules.
On-line orders on the back step.
Bolt the gate.
As light fails
Lonely in the melancholy streets.
Tense daily briefings.
Rules to save our lives
And sternly delivered statistics
Of dread loss and broken hearts.
No more normal.
Never again.
Poetry by William Scobie: Pictures by Bill Heaney