It is Day 501 of the daily new poems. Not quite the start of a new dispensation – there are a few more Spring poems yet to come. Your editor however, in recognition of how this all started with the daily poems getting going with the first UK coronavirus lockdown four years ago, offers you a recent poem that remembers the Covid days:
Covid days
those were the days
the Covid days
the days of clear skies with
no contrails seeding clouds
the days when we could hear
birdsong
bright on the morning
those were the days
the Covid days
when we could not visit
our ill father
or our ill wife
or indeed our ill child
because
the hospital was closed to visitors
those were the days
the Covid days
when social contact was truncated
when friendships were disrupted
when families were separated
when parties
only happened in high places
those were the days
the Covid days
days of good or ill
days of loss of breath
days of life and death
their legacy
is with us still
Peter Ualrig Kennedy