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POETRY IN THE PLAGUE YEAR

Poems written during the Coronavirus Outbreak 2020

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Sheila Lockhart

Muir of Ord, Ross-shire, Scotland

 

Sheila Lockhart is a retired social worker and lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands with her partner and two Icelandic horses, tending her garden and writing poetry.  She is a member of Ross-shire Writers and the Moniack Mhor writers’ group and has had work published by Northwords Now, Arachne Press, Nine Muses Poetry, Twelve Rivers (Suffolk Poetry Society), the StAnza Poetry Map of Scotland, The Writers’ Cafe and the Ekphrastic Review.

 

Poem written on 11th May 2020

 

matsukaze

 

the sheep have left 

dandelion galaxies

swirl across green emptiness

scuff of cropped grass

yellow stars crushed underfoot

 

gorse wildfires blaze

along the fence lines

with a scent of warmed coconut

nearby the willow warbler

practices his scales

 

a half bale moulders 

in the rusty feeder 

blackened bones of a ram, 

ribcage, spine and rotted fleece 

laid out to await cremation

 

the old pine leans into the wind 

it makes a sound 

the Japanese call

matsukaze 

it sounds to me

like sighing