Derek Healy  

Malvern, UK

 

Derek Healy lives in Malvern and has written poetry for the past forty years.  He prefers formal styles, and the sonnet has been a constant favourite.  He is poetry editor of the Gloucestershire based Graffiti literary magazine, and has had poems published in Orbis, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, The Cannon’s Mouth and The Seventh Quarry poetry journals amongst others.  His appearance at this year’s Cheltenham Poetry Festival has fallen victim to Coronavirus.

 

Poem written 5^th May 2020

 

 

Plague Sonnet VI

 

Dancing Days

 

We’re all still here, singing across the street

on Thursday nights, sharing some shouted fun

each Sunday at six, waving when we meet

and swerve, all smiles, doing the daily run.

They’re even getting friendly three doors down,

delivering notes to say God loves us still;

and children grin who up till now just frowned,

as though a whiff of us might make them ill.

 

It seems our little dance of mock disgust,

two yards apart, serves to inoculate

against the actual thing, instilling trust,

so, where we cannot love, we tolerate.

Yet when we’ve danced our fill, come close once more,

we might find distance suits us like before.