Darling Sparrows – by jcstaff

Were the leaves that green yesterday?
There seem so many of them presently,
blossom, fresh growth – like mid-spring.
But this beautiful decade has been tainted,
its hours are passing strangely, so slowly.
How peculiar our world feels, this planet
now foreign to us all; unchanged
only in name.
Outdoors, oxygen feels drenched
with a hazardous cocktail of
uncertainty, contamination.
So, we stay inside, secure.
Do the birds not know?
They sing louder now,
persistently inquiring
why earth is so silent.
Dawn chorus all day,
like the eerie backdrop
of a John Wyndham novel.
Oh darling sparrows,
your palpable fear is
our sudden nomality:
a life we didn’t choose
called 2020 lockdown.