by Natasha McDonagh
"I hate the daft man who makes us a herd / And who gets the illness but not the pain"
To my sister, the doctor
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