Three and a half months later the lights are back on
Signs lit up, pub TVs playing quiz shows or football games
Streets rumble into life, pop songs danced to by no one
Yet, a quarter-year catalogue ready, and with it laughter song
Grateful clinks of glasses, restaurants with exotic names
Let their beautiful scents haze over long quiet roads
Now hosting - hosting again! - that part of life sorely missed
Comforts of presence, old voices, tonight's tryst
The first in forever, it seems. Where to go?
What to do now a step has been taken out of the mist?
Where indeed, where have we been? Perhaps
A significant part of today's joy is fragile to touch
Like ruddy sunburn, relief both soothing and rough
In the back of their minds the fear, like the truth, has not elapsed
But worrying and wondering no longer matter much
It's good to see life back on again, though selfishly begun
And if the demon recovers to despoil the tentative will
To return, to be at peace, in the absent July sun
It will squeeze further the already drained health and care angels
Who have carried so much, and need no more work to be done.
@nepion_boreas17
