Lockdown haikus

Filling my empty
lockdown diary spaces
with daily haikus

I wish I’d written
from the very beginning – 
March the twenty-first

1.5.20
Friday night, witches
meet; no coven, cauldron, fire -
brooms now swapped for zoom

2.5.20
Sue’s reached seventy:
another lockdown party
dancing in zoom rooms

3.5.20
A single jasmine 
flower fills the house with scent:
tiny, powerful

4.5.20
It’s Star Wars Day so
May the Fourth be with you; my
children groan each year

5.5.20
Beltane fires are lit,
we’re gath‘ring singly this year
and Lou’s on the phone

6.5.20
Finally made it -
my pension’s today and
I welcome the crone

7.5.20
Ground elder, couch grass,
bindweed: legacies of this
untended garden

8.5.20
No witches tonight;
I’m too tired and this weekend
they should have been here

9.5.20
It’s started raining
for A Midsummer Night’s Stream
and Wet Mariners

10.5.20
Suddenly sadness
overwhelms me; I’m missing 
physical closeness

11.5.20
Tesco and Aldi
shelves are full but the aisles are
eerily quiet 

12.5.20
My son’s phone lesson
on how to pipe upholst’ry;
I’ve sent him photos

13.5.20
I understand why
conspiracy’s attractive;
I’ll go with cock-up

14.5.20
The gift this crisis
brings is time for the self and
long calls with far friends 

15.5.20
I’ve spent my pension
on flowers for the garden;
lockdown optimist

16.5.20
Drinks in the garden
And approval for what I’m
Starting to do here

17.5.20
The cut down to the 
river’s ancient, lined with stone, 
older than this house

18.5.20
Summer growth’s muffling
The road, though this year of course
There’s far less traffic

19.5.20
The gin’s replenished,
I’ve been given wine; all’s well
In my cloistered world

20.5.20
Freshly laundered sheets
Dried by the wind and sun; a
Simple luxury

21.5.20
Yesterday the birds
were singing by 4 am;
today’s rain-delayed

22.5.20
A rain-late chorus -
but a cuckoo is one of
the first to join in (4.30)

23.5.20
A friend has died; how
can you hold a funeral
in such times as these?

24.5.20
Such hypocrisy:
asking for public lockdown,
yet defending mates

25.5.20
Emailed my MP;
let’s see her justify the
actions of the toad

26.5.20
Yesterday he sat
in the rose garden, smelling
of lies and claptrap

27.5.20
More bullshit today;
seems he rewrote last year’s blog
to forecast this plague

28.5.20
I’m strapping my wrists
at night, hoping it gives me
a pain-free future

When this crisis ends 
I’ll dye my hair pink again;
The bottle’s waiting

5.6.20
Two pied flycatchers,
an ancient off-grid cottage
and a mature elm