:Julie Sampson.

Taunton Somerset UK.

Biography: A widely published poet from the South-west of England, Julie Sampson edited Lady Mary Chudleigh’s Selected Poems, 2009 (Shearsman Press). Her two poetry collections are Tessitura (Shearsman Press, 2014); and It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey and Windle) 2018. She was highly commended in the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize, 2019.

Date written: 8th May 2020.

 

 

Looking back from Lockdown on VE Day Anniversary - Plymouth Hoe 1945

 

From the solitary cell of self-isolation

I scan the sea of faces on the hoe

want to see them watching me

looking back at them,

the gap is a chasm of time,

dates don’t even match.

 

I think I know they danced

the night, the war

    away

but it’s a blur,

details lack specificity 

sensor chip sepia image quivery. 

 

Yes, mother’s voice declares

We drove over moor,

were over the moon,

city’s bells in delirium by the blaze

on the hoe that night,

singing kissing strangers sailor

linking arm in arm.

 

She may even have said The Coronation another time,

but just not then,

the photos don’t have

kudos nor ever will

tell the truth of fact

and it is at Dunkirk her war notes end.

 

I wonder what they’d make of us

if they from there could gaze up through the years

and read me writing this,

our celebrations of their Big Day

  cancelled

     in lieu of this canker 

       in our midst

 

or, twisting time’s spiral,

we could meet again

and clarify who’s within that shot

when distance becomes a tick,

solitary heart beat

slowing the purpose of our dying pulse

sharpening the clear intent of future focus.