Duty doctor at the Covid 19 vaccination clinic

This sun-streaked January afternoon

I am the duty doctor

Come back to the pandemic present

To be a gallery curator

Watching vaccinated patients

For something I hope will never happen

Observing for reactions, waiting for calls to help

These old faces who wait out their fifteen minutes

Have moved from imposed isolation’s room

Into a passageway that will lead

To a waiting place where they can view

Grey winter’s Covid sullen grip

Become daffodils, spring’s soft free air

Though February’s sad news and setbacks are to come.

A year stolen from lives that will live less long

Than full years already lived

And long to hold, be held by those they love

We do not yet know when this will end.

Each now leaves, grateful, tentative

Stepping out the door to go back home

Still patient but planning hope, the picking up of threads.

21/1/21

It is now almost 6 years since our lives were changed by Covid 19. And just over 5 years since the vaccination programme started - My wife and I were able to help at our local centre. At the beginning when no-one was really sure about reactions to the jab all the patients had to sit and wait for 15 minutes, watched over by a doctor "in case anything happened". It didn't and we were soon able to speed things above, but that very first session, with so many of my former patients in front of me, many of whom had not left home in months there was sense of both loss and hope.

The Flight into Egypt

We left by night.

Woken from sleep by angel’s warning dream

Packing possessions, tools, clothes, incense and the myrrh

In canvas sacks. Not waiting for light of Herod’s dawn

Our landlady waking to say goodbye

Her sleepy toddler looking on, not understanding why.

We travelled west.

Behind us sun rose on the life we’d known

Shadows cast before us, rocks glowing angry red

Uncertain future in a land we had not seen

Faint from the east we heard a bitter cry

Stars of hope dying young beneath harsh morning sky.

Years in Egypt

Finding our feet, new friends, a home, a job

The baby growing, playing ,finding speech

Hearing the stories that make our people who we are

Singing praise to the Lord we magnify

Then quiet as if gazing with some inner eye.

Another dream.

“Return home: the foul murderer is dead.”

We left, planning return to friendly Bethlehem

News of tyrant’s son sent us on to Galilee

Work, family, a life to satisfy

Son waiting Kingdom’s call while peaceful years passed by.

I wrote the poem in early 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine took place a few weeks later - it seemed right to put the poem into that context. The story of the picture starts bottom right and goes anticlockwise

Christmas Party

Winter afternoon drawing down to dark

Outside the cold, frost while haired on hedges, trees

Inside the warmth, loud music

The petite pert performer

Songs of the swinging sixties

Bringing back glitter ball memories

To party people who then were young

And still believe we are essentially unchangedFrom those distant days

Before the pains and joys and loss

Of middle age -now later life changed the way we look

But not our hopes, our love, our dreams.

December 2022

It was a very long wait for the Christmas party food at our U3A (University of the Third Age , though our local branch is not so erudite as some). Most- tables had finished their main course before we got our starter so there was plenty of time to write this on the back of the table place cards .

Present Motivation

Christmas love gifts always seem so innocent

Under-tree parcels of such fascination

Rustling paper heightening anticipation

The ripping open with exhilaration

Though revealing socks so kindly meant

But gifts may have a far different intent

Stuffed brown envelopes of manipulation

Secret Santa of social lubrication

Drachenfutter for wife’s propitiation

Snow White’s red juiced apple, malevolent.

Perhaps a solid object to complement,

Make happy memories of special celebration

Marriage, birth, a successful graduation

Birthdays that mark another year’s rotation

Value so much more than count of money spent

And there are gifts you would rather not have sent

Sweet grapes after serious operation

Cheque to mitigate earthquake desolation

Flowers after bereavement’s desolation

The times when words cannot speak what’s really meant

And then gifts not given by anyone’s intent

Goal scoring winning fans’ adulation

Music making bringing hearts’ exaltation

Great words stirring longing for liberation

Gifts bringing joy but also deep discontent

The sense that there is another element

Somewhere a source of deeper consolation

An answer to our sense of isolation

Hope for our own, the world’s, sad desperation

Something, someone to bring our lost hope’s descent.

January 2025

Drachenfutte - dragon food : "petrol station flowers bought in a hurry to appease an angry wife”

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I belong to an online poetry group : Trellis is part of the Association of Christian Writers. We meet monthly with a theme to given a couple of months before (last year was a whole series of different aspects of "Journey". It is a good discipline to have to write regularly! And I have wanted to get "drachen butte" into a poem ever since I heard it on a BBC4 radio comedy show.