Locked-down
To a patch
As the sun loses its way towards a hazy horizon
Land-locked by a shadow
No escape
From the foreign body here
Socially-distant
From a ground
As abandoned mines collapse with the weight of memory
The distant-past dissolved
By a globe
That crushed the hands I used to hold
Self-isolation
Is my fear
As unfamiliar trees take root I dare not wander haunted
Yet at my bedside a nightingale
A song
From the foreign body here
I’ve been reflecting on how this Covid-19 lockdown has forced us to inhabit a very particular place – our homes. It’s happening at a time when, for many people, globalisation has created a feeling of dis-place-ment, the sense that the land on which we live is no longer ours. The dissonance between those two experiences, and the presence of ‘foreign bodies’ is the context for this poem.
