These Days
Published by Acumen Poetry, volume 98
Everyone I know keeps saying ‘I can’t wait for things to get back to normal!’
and I say, ‘Oh yeah me too!’
but can I tell you a secret? I think I will miss
these days of quiet waiting, these days of
slow walking, empty mornings,
these days of all the noticing, like how
sunlight flickers like firelight behind morning-closed blinds
and how the swans bat their wings low over the black river
and how the blossom falls for fruit to bud and bloom
and oh, the trees! how they shine and breathe in layers of green on green
and how Venus surfaces against a dimming lilac sky
and how my lungs are full, and my legs are strong
and how I don’t need fixing, after all
and how these days of repetition and repeat release me from my slippery mythologies of success
so before I hurry back to normal, to the rushing fizz of it
let me stop to soak in the deep, clay quiet of these days
let me remember this holy boredom in my bones.
An extra note
The global lockdowns were a time of immense difficulty for so many people - and I’m fully aware that I was one of the lucky ones from this perspective. But through the challenges and the enforced slow time, I started to notice the world in a different way. The Groundhog Days of the first lockdown gave me some of the peace that I was missing (and desperately seeking) in the fraught busy-ness that used to jam-pack my days. Now that things have returned to some semblance of ‘normal’ I strive to remember and preserve some of these gifts (though I know it will be a life-long challenge!)