Stitch This

Occasionally it strikes me that this is all real
it’s not a film that I would avoid
I can’t shut the book in disbelief and rail against the trite and lazy drawing of characters in this play.
A farce without exit doors but lots of slamming –
no green man running.
Instead we think of our grandparents and how their tales of dried egg and gas masks seemed as fiction.
Fairisle pullovers.
Gumboots pulled up.
And how, I used to wonder, how did everybody cope?
I’ll tell you how
I know that now
I knew before
that isolation is not new
That actually this home holiday is not so different from every day
And I get through, as many do, by fighting any small decline
As if it was a key defensive line
In a battle drawn that will decide the war and my commands are all
That stop my troops from mass destruction.
To give up would be dereliction
of my duty,
to my cause.
Exhaustion , pain and boredom are but gnats as on my prize
I lock my gaze. Don’t blink my eyes.
So though these Weeks bring strange dimensions
To me they form part of a bigger collection.