Gabriel Griffin

Orta San Giulio, Italy

Founder in 2001 and organiser of Poetry on the Lake annual competition, festival and events on Lakes Orta & Maggiore, Italy (poetryonthelake.org); editor of annual anthologies.  Own poems often prized, published in anthologies and journals. (gabrielgriffin.org ) Collection: Campango and the Mouth-Brooders. Author: Along the old way: a pilgrimage from Orta to Varallo in the company of Samuel Butler (Wyvern Works 2010); St Giulio’s Isle, (Wyvern Works 2015), handbooks for the Venice Biennale seminaries, magazine articles, short stories. Just completed, IKON, a novel.

Poem completed 3rd April 2020

Lockdown 

Shut in, locked, barred, bolted, enclosed, confined

outside the sun, the sky, the spring, the swoop

of swifts rushing home to eaves, the imagined ease

of a field lush with soft grasses to step on, to roll in

do you like butter? a flower’s golden light on your skin

the daisies, their petals – she loves me – plucked one by one

she loves me not – the puff of dandelion’s crown, its seeds

blowing over the globe. Will our world ever return?