Despite our best intentions, things do not always go
according to plan. Such has been the case this year for all us as the
consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic have affected our day-to-day lives in
ways that this time last year we could not have imagined. This has of course
also meant that a lot of local planned activities have had to be postponed or
cancelled, including this year’s Ilminster Literary Festival, which would have
been our fifth.
Our team of Trustees had been working hard all year to put
together an amazing line up of writers for us all to meet and listen to and
were of course disappointed when we were forced to cancel the event because of
the Covid-19 restrictions imposed
However, moving forward, there is always next year, and in
the meantime, knowing that we have a number of enthusiastic supporters and
budding writers in our midst we promoted a writing competition during
August.
As one of three judges, I am delighted that we were able to
unanimously select Alison Templeton from Norton-sub-Hamdon as the clear winner
of a £30 book token, for her impressive and very apt Post-Covid
poem.
Linda Piggott-Vijeh
Post-Covid
First we need to catch it,this
Invisible, silent, undercover agent of death.
Global Enemy Number One.
War and spy thrillers are, retrospectively, easy
reads.
Then we Post-Covid. How on earth, on this earth,
Do we post Covid?
Double wrap, bubble wrap,
Incarcerate in transit, tracked, traced and signed
for.
Where to post Covid.
Back to Wuhan whence it came?
To the wet market pangolin and bat market.
Mark it Deadly Poisonous with skull and cross bones.
Then we post Covid to the ocean depths,
Or deep underground.
Drown or bury, until global warming
Sea levels or wild fires it up out and away again.
Who to post Covid?
The scientists in sterile quarantine,
In their perfect isolation to fathom this
Pandemic devastation.
Or post Covid to full PPE medics,
Post Protective Environment.
Intensive care through intensive caring,
Propelled by intensive compassion.
Don’t post Covid to politicians!
Globally racing for power to heal,
Power for money, or status,
In the pandemic for world domination.
No, post-Covid to hearts that are tender,
Where less is best and more is everyone, irrespective.
Every living thing breathing clean air
And coma-induced-ventilation breathing becomes a metaphor
for a time when human kind had not
yet learned to be fully kind to its own kind or to the
natural world it is part of.
Alison Templeton
30 August 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment