This week’s poem is one newly-written and just received from a friend, Jerry Gilpin. As well as reading it below, you can hear Jerry read it with an accompanying film created by his son Matthew,
‘Gratitude’ focusses on one moment unique to our times, stays with it to observe it closely and dig a little deeper into what is going on alongside what is happening. Finally, the poet opens things up by making a link with the natural world, as the poem literally takes flight.
What unique moment might you write about with attentive observation that pushes below the surface? What would you write about under the heading of ‘Gratitude’ – or another positive quality of your choice? What linking image from the natural world can you introduce that shifts the frame and takes the writing to another place?
Gratitude
This is what it sounds like.
We stand on the edge of safety,
half-in, half-out of doors
in the grey evening light,
longing for the touch of flesh
on flesh, for hand to meet with hand
in greeting or concern.
The theatres are closed:
drama is confined to hospitals.
We need something to applaud
in these silent streets
where people used to flow like blood.
The birds pause their evening
song. A clock chimes; and slow, then rushing
through the echoing city comes
a standing ovation with whoops and bells
and far-off trumpets and bagpipes.
Something locked inside for days is now released
and, graceful as a flock of starlings,
lifts off into the night:
a murmuration of praise
that swirls into the fading sky,
each clap an angel in a face mask,
wings unfurled and radiant in the dusk.
Jerry Gilpin
