Author, poet and Brighton parishioner Kate Llewellyn has written a poem about self-isolation during the coronavirus pandemic.

Kate is an acclaimed author of 25 published books comprising poetry, memoir, travel, essays, journals and letters. More than 35,000 copies of her book The Waterlily: A Blue Mountain Journal have been sold.

Her latest work, Harbour, published this year by Wakefield Press is a book of poems written by Kate over the past two decades.

A Time of Virus and Lassitude

Scraps of day fall around my feet
shreds of time that have little
shape or meaning.
(Breakfast at dinnertime would be o.k.)

Fear stains all I do
while the insubstantial day passes as a cloud.
Digging is appealing –
while I dig I am not dead and may
even eat the food
which I am planting.

Day after day peace taps me on the shoulder.
To give myself a hug I wrap around my arm
the strap of the machine
that measures my blood’s pressure and pump it tight.

The only other thing now left to do
is to ride the bike I bought
from boredom.
And let the wind
comb through my hair
like my mother’s fingers
making plaits for two
saxe blue satin bows.

Then walk to school
and begin this life again
with many fewer mistakes
and entirely free from calamity.