Sickening for Summer

Reflections on Life in Lockdown

Photo: dadalan real on Unsplash

Eventually
the rain you had
caught
up and reached here too.
It took a
heavy toll,
drowning novel ideas
of growing summer

Vegetables
from seed,
in their infancy.
Soaking through
tight soil, sluicing clean
the dirty

screens
of unused
parked cars.
shaking wet
still petals from the ripe
cherry
aching with blossom,

like the waiting
patient, delirious in breathless
fever,
so that sweat drips from her
outstretched limbs
and
strips
of clothing
are shed at last,
fluttering down
to vacant pavements;

the opening
wings
at our closed
gates.

©Anna Murzyn. April 2020

From “Letters from a Walled Eden” Collected Poems 2020–21