Pentecost Moments

Love and the Island of Caves
Love and masks in an urban area
in the time of  covid-19 lockdown
 
We have come to this place
where we are real to each other only
Facing each other in Plato’s cave
Everyone else a masked shadow
passing. In the lilies above our bed
the flowers fade and there are only the spaces,
macabre faces in a slow dance of fear.
 
Most real to us are the shafts
of sunlight in the bougainvillea
mixing crimson with potato-bush blue
the chirruping choir of sparrows
and the chew-chit of the collared sunbird,
as lost as we in their new freedom.
 
Voices of neighbours unrhythm our morning
Laughter across the yards invade us
dislocated nouns and verbs fall about us,
diffusing. Memory and pain pour from us
as we eucharist at home.
 
Strangely we discover a life we once knew
The machine hums and fabric and cottons colour a table
Pens and pastels wash through paper
Meals are conjured and senses savoured
And we play.
 
In the streets we haste past strangers
in the dawn glow
Momentary recognitions
At dusk images of our children and theirs
arise and fade into untouching loneliness
Another day
Our friends die and eddy into the silent clouds
 
Touching and tasting puts the world under siege
 
Now it is only you my love
For this we had chosen each other
In that distant time of freshness and promise
For only our love serves and saves
In this island of caves.
 
Bob Commin 2020

Soul Food

Cheryl Gammon, a mathematics teacher, wife and mother reading the poem See his blood upon the Rose by Joseph Mary Plunket (1916)

Dorian Haarhoff poet and storyteller shares a story during these covid-19 days.