LOCKDOWN LETTERS

19^th February

Friday

As often, I wake early and as I lie waiting for sleep to return, my brain whirs into action.   In vain I summon the calm voice of my yoga teacher intoning, ”I am still, heavy and warm:  I am relaxing, relaxing, relaxing.”

I rerun the past week, trying to remember what differentiates one yesterday from the next.   Did we drop in to Waitrose or the Coop?   Did we walk to the park along the canal or through the streets?   What did we have for dinner?

I recall that on one of the yesterdays, on returning from the park, we stopped in a small garden to look at the bare trees against the evening sky.   It was not yet dusk though it might as well have been, the light was so gloomy.   In the branches above a robin was singing its little heart out and snatches of Hardy’s Thrush floated into my mind;  and Keats’s Nightingale;  and Shelley’s Skylark.   With a jolt of surprise I realise that that yesterday was Monday.

Then I recall reading a glowing review in last weekend’s Arts supplement of a new collection of poems by the girl who was recently awarded the T.S.Eliot Prize for Poetry.   A few short excerpts were quoted and one whole poem.   I imagine the letters W T A F framing themselves over my head, as in a cartoon, writ large and followed by a giant ?

Sleep drifts back;  and troubled dreams.