eleanor This was written at the beginning of our national lockdown when things were so strange and the future was such a deep unknown. I went for a walk on the foreshore at Greenwich.
I step down to her pebbled edge
Crouch on hunkers
Look across her wideness
Upstream and down
The Thames is quiet tonight
She laps the foreshore
Surface undisturbed
By boats and ships
No rocking waves and tumbled mud.
From the other bank
Sounds carry on the air
A small boy shouts Mummy
And throws a stone
I hear it plop
The crunch of feet on foreshore shingle.
A world of sound is ours again
Gifted for a little while
As from a tranquil past
For nothing now disturbs
No din of traffic thundering along Trafalgar Road
No trails of screaming vapour in the sky
Her rivers running clear and clean
The city breathes again.
This is a gift to treasure
While there are those who gasp for breath elsewhere
We share this air
Though distanced from each other
See and hear ourselves anew.
Recitals
Phoebe Demeger
This is where I grew up. Unfamiliar, yet familiar.
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