Hurry up, Harry, there’s rainbows in the
Windows and face masks in the gutter now,
Hurry up, you in the Facebook picture
Looking for connection not asking how -
They clap every Thursday because they don’t
Know what else to do, you go in without
“PPE” to talk to patients that won’t
Stop smoking, hearing Trafalgar Square shout.
I like the quiet, running water heard
Beneath London man holes after the rain.
I hate the daft man who makes us a herd
And who gets the illness but not the pain -
I wait for the day we learn to be one,
A day - just - good enough for our own sons.
Natasha McDonagh is a poet and musician from near Oxford based in North East London.
Images are part of Mike Downing's A Month Of Sundays: Covid-19 as Told by Webcams, a series of images documenting the changing spaces of urban living since the lockdown