APRIL (COVID)
GK / TWENTY-TWENTY ONE
The contents of the kit
were not damaged from the drop
for the kit was protected
by a sturdy cardboard box,
that doubled as a prop,
for the pot capped close
to mimosa, call it yellow,
with a thin line measure.
Purple-topped lancets numbered
three altogether. For fingertips to spill
to the six hundredth measure.
Once fed with plasma, place the yellow cap
(closer to mimosa) on the pot, push it on,
when tight you’ll hear it click,
ten times turn it over so to gently make it mix.
Do not shake, do not swish, quiver or quake,
for any reason feeling faint,
from the sight of flowing plasma?
Or the physical exertion, you’ve made to get it flowing,
take heart from knowing, you are adding,
increasing understanding, why some are not withstanding
the infection that’s been spreading.
Feeling able, begin cleansing. Apply pressure
to the puncture, and from the plaster to the finger,
to the pot, then to the pouch, coded yellow or mimosa.
Pressing out, seal inside, evenly from the centre.
Time and date, return by mail, use a postbox
of priority, with the national health identity,
but not on weekends, or if temperature exceeding
C-five-and twenty.
APRIL (COVID / RIVER)
GK / TWENTY-TWENTY ONE
Leaving aside the dregs of March,
this is the first month moving light from dark.
Leaving aside the daylight saving,
the first month for newly observing.
Daffodil yellow to that of dandelion and cowslip.
The peachy summer plumage of a black-tailed-godwit
and the whisked egg white of the little egret.
Frost on the grass of the shaded bank.
The bracken and hedgerow yet to be cut back.
What the dredger extracts, with its umbilical paraphernalia.
Prickly green, deep yellow must be gorse but what’s that other?
Guided by arrows when looking for flowers
the library has recently restored opening hours.
After tracing protocols, help from Dewey and an assistant,
I set off through the newly arranged one-way system
to five hundred and eighty-two decimal thirteen,
where a book was shelved for identifying.
And now adding…
Red dead-nettle and lesser periwinkle
to dandelion, cowslip, daffodil, and primrose,
and of hawkweed varieties,
mouse-ear, few-leaved, of the beard and leafy,
smooth to rough, naturally…
Slow-down, slow-down, the guide says it’s too early,
for each of those relatives.
While the frost’s ambition continues to cover,
‘Thirteen days now, a new record for April,’
on the bank’s shaded side, cowslip still clusters,
(well it did arrive later) but for the trumpets of daffodils
the month is over.
APRIL (RIVER)
GK / TWENTY-TWENTY ONE
Lemon zest, kiwi, lime, tangerine…
Fluorescing a presence along a river scene,
long striding over, long striding over,
to the path seeking traction when run in anger.
There to alert, there to guide,
oversized fruit floats on the water,
to houseboats tied, marking the end the converted trawler
of the first stretch with parcels of land,
unfenced on the riverside to a blind corner.
Can you ever say a path does more than prompting?
For here to the corner blind its almost inciting
to barrel along on a toboggan run spree…
Is it this way only to me?
Or something to do with an invisible law?
But barrel I don’t and give running a miss,
instead treading to a kind of brisk,
for there is wear, tear and then running repairs
of the kind to put you back into virtual physio care…
So I toe the line and look out to the wilder side,
at the muscle memory of Anglo Saxon times,
famed for a boat not known for its upward trajectory,
hauled upland over eastern angles, buried, interred for the nobility,
until careful hands uncovered, then turned over;
the find, the house, the land,
all National Trusted.
Tonight the fluorescing comes from the wilder side,
from two vehicle’s unlikely passing, highlighting the road
with distant, horizontal blushing, between the trees,
neon blue to neon blue… neon blue to neon blue…
unknowingly, underlining the house atop of the Hoo.
Deben Soundings 