From one to another

FROM ONE TO ANOTHER
A collection of short poems that see one year end and another begin

The Passing of 2020
This 2020, passing’s, been the most appalling year
Of illness, loss, confusion, loneliness and dreadful fear;
Of missed events, occasions, anniversaries unshared,
Of constant wonderings how friends and family have fared;
But superhuman efforts, too, of vigilance and care,
Of acts of loving kindness, acts of heroism rare.
And finally, in the darkness of this tunnel, we see light
And hopefulness ahead of us, instead of dread and fright.
So, let our poor, depleted Christmas still bring joy and cheer
Then bid this passing year goodbye, without a single tear!
© Miranda Fuller

The Lightest Touch
You gave us fear, you gave us hope
backwards, forwards, sideways
Upwards downwards
In-between, fair, unfair
Right, wrong Cummings and goings, goodbye
The cavalry was stopped
Ice shows us everything can stop
In time frozen
We lived in the biggest open prison
The next day the sun always comes up
and the lightest touch comes
from the hardest knock
© Pete Hind-Fletcher

New Year
The sun still came up this morning,
Quite late, but it came all the same,
And the cat that lives in our garden
Needed feeding and made it quite plain
That for him, not a thing would be changing,
And the birds joined in his refrain!
Only man with his need to alter
One date to another, how strange!
© Kevin Byers

Hindsight
If I had known how it was going to be
I would have hugged you more in the Spring.
I would have taken a train to Waterloo and walked by the river
Drinking in the landscape, smiling at the history.
I would have sat in Tate Modern, paying homage to the Rothkos
Immersed in the colours, washed clean by the light.
I would have stood beside The Golden Hinde and journeyed in my mind’s eye
To places far across the sea, past my set horizon, ever onwards,
Pulling against the shrinking world.
There will be other seasons, filled with friends.
We just have to be patient.
© Caroline Brooker

Goodbye sad 2020
Of you we've had a plenty
It’s good that you are done
So we can look forward in 2021
When all this Covid is gone
Hopefully friends and family
Can once more meet happily
And our activities we can resume
Without all this doom and gloom
So hope to see you all soon
Goodbye sad 2020
Of you we've had a plenty
© Penny Gilham

Again, again again!
Corona, Covid, PPE, ICU, UCME in A&E
One for Hands, two for face, three for an angel waiting at the gates!
four for masks, five hand sanitise and Six but it’s not Magpie!
Seven, Praise be for the online delivery in a locked gate internet home based society.
Eight, Don’t comply, stamp your feet, jump up and down maybe just ask yourself why?
Nine It’ll all end in tiers 1,2,3,4 & 5 and a sprinkle of National Lockdown.
We’re all in this together stay at home, keep alive
Happy clappy claptoverts find a cause, tell your neighbours, bang bang bang in time together the
symphonic pots and pans.
We’re all doomed in never never never la la land?
© Graeme Blackmore

Goodbye to 2020
Was there some ageing fairy in 2019
Who scratched her silver head and said “Oh dear! I’m getting vague …
“I’m seeing stars – but where’s my wand? Oh where’s it gone and been?
“We need some fun for everyone – so let’s just have a plague!”?
And did she only mean to say “Now, let’s just have a play!”?
But her wand came with predictive text – they do, they take control! –
And once the old year shuffled off, soon after New Year’s day
The virus came with a nasty cough, the shops ran out of loo roll.
It’s been a really rotten year – it hasn’t been a hoot –
With no more talk of the future, but only ‘going forward’…
As for French on Zoom – well, zut! We kept getting stuck on mute.
Pandemic upticks you’re no fun. Go away – we’ll all applaud!
© Frances Evans 1.1.21

January First
Bleary eyed I reach for the clock, squinting to make sense
of the numbers, it appears I've missed half the day.
The bit where you sit, notebook on knee and seriously
contemplate your shortcomings and the changes to be made.
I pull the duvet over my head, snuggle into the warmth,
content in the knowledge this opportunity will soon roll round again.
© Niamh Corcoran 5.1.21

A strange and longed for feeling
As we prepare to leave this damaged shore.
The sea stretches out before us
It ebbs and flows, ends and flows,
ends
and begins.
I want rid of this shore of sadness, death and despair.
Whilst Hope pulls up the anchor
A surge of strength climbs aboard
As midnight strikes, we heave away
No longer looking back
As together we ride and surf those waves.
© Nicky Newberry

How keen we are to move on and forget
A year of boredom, sadness and regret.
Yet in those months we got to learn so much
On how to cope, to thrive, to keep in touch.
So twenty twenty one should bring no fear.
What we’ve survived must give us cause for cheer.
We’ve laughed and cursed and shown a helping hand
Been comforted by friends throughout the land
So let’s move on with hope and now embrace
A new more hopeful year and Hands Face Space
(But most of all - vaccines!!!)
© Barbara Thorn

Are we like our own
shadows projected into
our own past by an
Unknown light,
To then receive greeting cards
from our own future
that we had sent.
And were there travellers
on that ocean far,
Or just our own greeting cards sent
as to what is yet to be.
© Anthony Maccini

Entering a New Year – French Pantoum
Longing to leave behind the darkness of 2020
So many plans unfulfilled and denied
A year of letting go and adjusting
Discovering gifts in the darkness
So many plans unfulfilled and denied
Meeting family and friends on screen
Discovering gifts in the darkness
Knowing the sun will return once again
Meeting family and friends on screen
A year of letting go and adjusting
Knowing the sun will return once again
Longing to leave behind the darkness of 2020
© Denise Dale

YEARS
We want a refund
That last year you supplied was damaged.
All the years supplied are perfect
Any damage is caused by the users
Here is a brand new, perfect, year
Take better care of this one.
There is no charge.
© Anon

10 months Ago
10 months ago, afraid to get fresh air
Walking slowly, with overdue care,
And peering cautiously around overgrown hedges.
Anxiety rising as a silent runner shoots past,
Crossing many roads, desperate to get home,
Avoiding anyone ahead, saying hello only in my mind.
10 months down the line,
Coping as best as I can,
inhaling deep breaths, walking tall,
Smiling whilst listening to the dawn chorus,
Just quietly waiting, feeling inwardly strong.
© Paula

Haiku
Finger walking
I finger walked along the tube map the other day
Nobody stopped me
or asked me pay.
© Anon

Time, sticks like mud,
Thick, glutenous, temporal slime,
I try to wash it off,
The months and the days,
To shed the year like a sickly skin,
But it spreads, like a dirty ticking clock,
Seconds, smeared across space,
Time, sticks like blood
The new year, congealed.
© Anon

A Christmas Poem
Christmas games bring lots of fun
The firsts in line are a starter for nine
To find the rest will fill your time
Chairs in games to start a party
Hits of today to make it swing
Rich the rhymes that are hid in
Itch to let the Day begin
Sash of a velvety silken kind
This Santa always had in mind
Mass of goodies that were sought
Arms full of Holly have been bought
Stairs now decked our tasks now wrought
© John Rutter Dec.20

Pandemic Postpones Panto!
Many magic memories
Delightful dames
Krazy kids
Berserk baddies
Creative costumes
Superb sophisticated songs
Marvellous music
Awed appreciative audience
Arise again!
© Gill Davies

Conquering the Curse
Will it be better, will it be worse?
Will we ever conquer the curse?
Will it mutate, or go out with a bang?
Will we ever hang out with our gang?
I’ve had both my injections
To conquer infections.
I have no objections to
Medical corrections.
Will I ever get peace
Or as far as to Greece?
My holidays in June
......might as well be to the Moon!!
© Laura Dowd

A punch in the gut,
Air, sucked shut, ripped, disembodied, gripped,
Left empty by stale time, stagnant, the year riven and split like dead wood
Wreckage, strewn with reckless abandon across the divide,
A frayed rope across an empty space,
The frayed hope of a new year’s hollow embrace
Threads unravelling.
Time untravelling.
A tattered bridge swaying in the bitter wind,
Debris, blown like tumbleweed towards a new dawn.
And so, we mourn,
And grieve…and dare to believe.
© Anon

2020 - The Year That Was…
As I reflect on the passing of 2020, a year like no other I can remember…?!?!
Shiny, sparkly, & new, filled with anticipation, possibilities, hopes & dreams…
Now, but a distance memory, with all that has passed…
Life disconnected - shattered into pieces, like a broken mirror. LIVING moment by moment,
with days turning into weeks, then into months - all blurring into one, with no sign of change,
nor a glimmer of HOPE!!!
The practice of Gratitude, Love & Kindness, Meditation, Self-Care begins to raise the SPIRITS.
Being in NATURE, placing my fingers in the soil becomes a daily practice, & a reminder of my
connection to the EARTH & MOTHER NATURE.
Then another New Year rises like a Phoenix from the Ashes – Once more I am filled with
OPTIMISM, HOPES & DREAMS. I am reminded that LIFE is all but an illusion...
© Louise Anderson

Silent Space
Hope smiles from the threshold
of the year to come, whispering
‘It will be happier’
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Spotted at Ham House by Katharine Dallas
Words for summerhouse silence chosen for January by Janette, Gardener and Optimist.