Deathly silence – solitude a lonely road to travel
when faced with nothing but oneself;
and the days stretch with an elasticated ease
yet shrink too quick once 24 hours complete a cycle.
Birds holler beatitudes of comfort,
but their banter is ever less than human
and the lack of contact underestimates the heart
as yet another day dawns its ending
beginning from the start.
How do you tame time with all its ticking?
Will a spoon full of resilience
stir a mind full of observance
combining how to live a lockdown
with a limit of existence?
And so I bake another sourdough of regret
expecting failure,
but watch it rise instead.
I look up towards an unfamiliar sky
and see an old man in a chariot pulled by stallions;
and in the earth a worm wriggles with such a perseverance
the invertebrate becomes an Advocate of Hope.
I dig for England
watching for the fruits of possibility to thrust forth
and then between my teeth I crush a freshly grown tomato
with the taste of how things used to be –
Remember? Tomatoes of the past?
I break my bread across the pavements,
each commune distanced by the cracks,
each crack a metre wide,
each friend an exceptional transaction
and I think of my mother;
and as I stitch my adolescent years in patchwork
my bowl of positivity flows over
flooding this disaster with a history
writing inconspicuous me
into its unabridged notes.
And in spite of all career plans
chiselled by Corona’s sharp uncompromising blade
I see things aren’t so bad.
I have learnt to view things from a different perspective.
So despite all the aloneness
and the heartbreak
and the debilitating dread,
I now know how to bake a starter for the future
all from having mastered
the obligatory
probiotic loaf of bread!
SM©2021
SALLY MORTEMORE 