This book of poems and prose from writers across the world has just been published and I’m happy to say that I’m one of the selected writers for my poem ‘A Piece of Thyme’ written about the first meeting between my sons and their partners during lockdown. We met up during the summer of 2020 when we all had a brief period of getting together before things became even worse than they had before! A brief period of normality with restrictions.

I heard about this project, whose funds all go to a local hospice via one of the editors, Jan Moran Neil, a lady who was previously interviewed for the Association of Christian Writers magazine in 2009, when she discussed her passion for the theatre. Jan and I have kept in touch since. I recommend as many as possible buying a copy of the book, not because my poem is in there but because it supports such a worthy cause. It has been over a year in the making and is available on Amazon in both book or kindle form. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=when+this+is+all+over&crid=2JNR3BF3OI21Q&sprefix

My poem is shared below.

The Piece of Thyme

This piece of thyme is all I have left of the time
we spent together in the walled Victorian garden
at Hughenden. We could not touch because of
coronavirus, simply bash elbows for our contact
even though you, my children, adults now, 
I longed to hug you, kiss you, hold you with
a mother's love. This virus has separated us. 

You in your worlds of computers and medicines
and I in mine, dreaming, thinking, wishing, writing
about what could have been, should have been
if things were normal. But what is normal now
as we live through a pandemic of global proportions? 
We laugh and joke and take our photos, socially distanced, 
marking the moment, this moment in time when we
walked together, yet spaced apart.  

I kiss the air of these embraced moments, 
our moments in the sun as I press the piece of thyme 
stolen from the garden to my heart
as I would have pressed you if I could. 
But the moment now has passed like the thyme. 
All I can do now is hold you in my heart, 

praying for better days. 

I hope you enjoy reading it.