a letter from (no place like) Home

All correspondence now begins with the routine,
but heartfelt,
Dear Friend, hope you are safe and well.
..and I do….
In my nuclear armageddon nightmares a half life and more ago I used to imagine the slow cloud of fallout drifting towards us on the weather, invisible and deadly.
So I have dreamed these moments of spring grass and green, yellow, blue,
when the plant world bursts into life.
But in the joy of this moment there is dread.
Strange walking at dawn,
getting up early to get out, not really out of choice
but to avoid the pumping virus breath of unmasked runners and uphill cyclists.
I am learning to fear.
Watching/listening to the spaces humans are withdrawing from.
Rats in the compost heap.
The dawn chorus gets louder or did I just get up early

In our house I was the last threat, it was me who shook hands with the nice scaffolder coming to build a platform to fix the roof lifted and scattered by the winds.
Weeks ago and tomorrow, the two weeks are up from that last skin contact with a stranger.
Our flat rang with Indian drones and sitar from my daughter and boyfriend who had dodged the virus like skimming stones on a calm sea: from master class training to tourism, a step behind Trump and a step ahead of lock down, to a show that was closed just as they got back. Last skip, a rescue ride picking them up and bringing them here, as it all shut down.  Now they have gone, the house rests in a scented calm, for that moment it was a family Christmas in a lifeboat.

With the death toll still rising and in the searing glare of a burning sun we realised how long it had gone on for. No testing. No tracing. Chaos in the Coop, silent panic in the well spaced queues at Waitrose. Monthly we read names and re-membered those who died of poverty in the Bath Workhouse as underfunded care homes bled death statistics, their modern counterparts.
The virus forced imaginations;
The virus revealed ugly truths and complacent privilege.
And as violent deaths of black people at the knees and guns of the white state continued, a boil like a great carbuncle on the face of humanity burst. Brewing for 300 hundred years. I cant breathe. I cant breathe. I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
I cant breathe

Twenty times. Last breath. One man, George Floyd. Too many others.
300 years. White silence. Whisper it
I don’t know where home is.

Today
That insidious enchanting white silence clings to the valleys of wealth in a oily smog, as contagious as the virus, invisible, deadly. The sounds of questions, and a noisy reclaiming the space opens the door to reparation and reconciliation.
Locked down, not locked down, still being lied to. Its shit.
Our celebration is cancelled.
The sun has stopped shining...but even that bit was scarey.
at least Colston is down and the shout is out.

With love and solidarity

Your mate.

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Response to Space Place Practice call for responses themed Home