Duty doctor at the Covid 19 vaccination clinic

This sun-streaked January afternoon

I am the duty doctor

Come back to the pandemic present

To be a gallery curator

Watching vaccinated patients

For something I hope will never happen

Observing for reactions, waiting for calls to help

These old faces who wait out their fifteen minutes

Have moved from imposed isolation’s room

Into a passageway that will lead

To a waiting place where they can view

Grey winter’s Covid sullen grip

Become daffodils, spring’s soft free air

Though February’s sad news and setbacks are to come.

A year stolen from lives that will live less long

Than full years already lived

And long to hold, be held by those they love

We do not yet know when this will end.

Each now leaves, grateful, tentative

Stepping out the door to go back home

Still patient but planning hope, the picking up of threads.

21/1/21

It is now almost 6 years since our lives were changed by Covid 19. And just over 5 years since the vaccination programme started - My wife and I were able to help at our local centre. At the beginning when no-one was really sure about reactions to the jab all the patients had to sit and wait for 15 minutes, watched over by a doctor "in case anything happened". It didn't and we were soon able to speed things above, but that very first session, with so many of my former patients in front of me, many of whom had not left home in months there was sense of both loss and hope.

Lindsey Spring

Grey cloud

Ploughed field

Budded hawthorn hedge

Lark song

Lapwing cry

Spring light growing slowly strong

New grass

Lambs stare

Yellow daffodils

Rooks fly

Trees awake

Lindsey under mid-March sky

Rooted

“that you, being rooted and grounded in … Ephesians c3 v7

Rooted in dark embrace of earth

Safe from cold winter’s overlay

The first faint stirring of reviving life

Pale buds push upwards to new birth.

Grounded in richness of good soil

Provided with the needs for growth

Rain of grace seeps down to nourish hope

That no return of frost can spoil

Season moves on to early spring

Shoots break through into a wider world

Green tentative but stretching to the sky

Where clouds scud by and skylarks sing

Stems grow and swell to latent bloom

Aware that what they will become

Is more than this, their true and destined self

Dancing joyful after winter’s gloom.

One day of warmth beneath blue sky

The sleepers wake to gold and glory

And know surpassing love that unlike earth’s

Daffodils will not fade and die

Wilderness

What were they like, those forty days alone?

Faded the noise of crowd on Jordan bank

The still hot air of desert afternoon

Air shimmering, all but you asleep.

What was in your mind and heart?

Memories of your childhood home?

Nazareth, the wood, chisels and the lathe

The family you left for these hard stones.

The words of Cousin John, who baptised you

The dove’s descent and father’s voice above

Crowd briefly silent as you walked away to this

Hunger, heat, temptation to conform.

Shepherd, you surveyed the land you’d lead through

Healer, you experienced pain

King, you triumphed over evil

Short cuts that would have bypassed your cross

Yes, you worked through the words about you

Yes, meditation on the Word you are

Yes, the future as it lay before you

Yes, the knowledge of the death you’d die

More. You prayed beyond the next three years

Looking to those who would one day believe

In times and lands you made and are still making

Including – though so improbable – me.