Bake-a-yarn: March 2020

Friday, 27 March 2020

Whatsapp during Lockdown

Since Rosy joined the Whatsapp group…

There have been alerts about thousands of euro

Flying out of customers’ accounts, mostly Danske customers,

But maybe you too…

Preventative cures for Covid 19: like lemon in hot water

Imbibed in the evening with a teaspoon of baking powder…

Images of a Scarlett O’Hara eat-your-heart-out ball gown replete with petticoat hoop-

The latest seasonal-social-distancing outfit from Amazon…

O Corona sung to the tune of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma…

Bored lockdown victim cutting the grass with scissors (I do that anyway betimes)…

Dog on strike in protest on top of kitchen cupboard

Refusing to go for yet another inessential outing…

A hundred admonitions to stay safe, wash hands, cough/sneeze into tissue,

Keep two metres apart…

Rotterdam’s Philharmonic Orchestra performing

separately-together from different locations…

Good jokes, bad jokes, wine jokes

Did I tell you the one about….

Eight Things Happy People Do…

A clip from the Bee Gees video Stayin’ Alive…

And a quote from Seamus Heaney:

“if we winter this one out

we can summer anywhere”

Thanks Rosy!!

Wednesday, 25 March 2020

Covid in the Park

Ribbons flutter on the path up ahead. Another doomed tree?

Or a wishing-tree, a fairy-tree, a rag-tree?

Repository of our prayers, our requests for intervention,

for blessing in these new Covid days?

Pink and striped, the ribbons look like crystal sugar sticks

Their hydraulic action excavating and demolishing milk teeth

Souvenir rock wrapped in plastic that creaks and cracks and cuts like glass

I smell salt on the air, hear the flow and backflow of waves shingling across stone

But these are Exercise Stations, not trees,

Their candy-striped-pink supplications

Asking you not to embrace

Warning you not to engage

Reminding you that taste and touch

Can be fatal these days.

Tuesday, 24 March 2020

For Eoin

We didn’t candle-bless your birthday this month

And Mother’s Day has slipped-by unkissed and unhugged

And no-one’s buying Easter eggs. And when I see them there

Stocked and shelved in empty aisles I think of you-

Giant Dairy Milk panic-bought early, and often

At half price after the event. And you

Cracking eggs well into the summer

And this year you ask has Easter been cancelled?

And where are we on the graph?

And can we flatten out the curve?

And when will it peak?

And when can you come home?