"Significance" Poem 8 from "A slur of tense"

 

“Significance”   Poem 8 from “A slur of tense”

 

I still forget my mask when I leave the house sometimes – it just goes to show that some habits require more than the year and a bit that we have been wearing them.  I compensate for my forgetfulness by storing a stock of clean masks in the glove compartment of the car.

Even though it is not strictly (or it didn’t used to be) necessary to wear a mask when exercising I always wear mine when I go out on my bike.  This allows me to feel smug and to hiss “Covidiota!” under my breath when I pass those miscreants who are maskless, because

now (apart from smokers!!?) all must wear masks, even on the beach!

The weather this month has not been very good and there has been little incentive for people to make the trip to the seaside to stare at a sea which is reminiscent of the colder waters of the north than the usually sparkling blue Med.  Still, Spanish people do love a Paseo and they will walk to see and to be seen no matter what the weather.

Spanish and Catalan people are much more demonstrative than their British counterparts: they kiss and they hug and they touch.  All the things that the pandemic orders you not to do.  There have been many discussions about how to greet people to keep true to the Iberian need for contact, but also to keep to the Covid rules.  This means that there is an ostentatious display of Covid rectitude but, having displayed the correct behaviour, there is an assumption that such rule keeping allows a more tactile rule breaking!

People are fed up with restrictions, they want things to be as they were and, as we build up to summer, there is going to be trouble as people want to go to the beach, to sunbathe, to swim to have a good time.

And the percentage of the country that has been vaccinated is woefully small and no one (absolutely no one) believes the government when they say that 70% of the population will have been injected by the end of the summer (no one!)

What people are not thinking about is the part that the church plays in their lives.

Although Spain and Catalonia are Roman Catholic countries, they are not devout church going Roman Catholics.  In Catalonia the recent history of the Roman church is not a supportive one and there is a dislike of institutionalised religion.

In this part of the world, the sea has a greater pull than the clergy!

 

Significance

 

 

Fitful sun through broken cloud.

The weather is indifferent.

Not true domingueros lure –

and they can’t travel from ‘outside’.

The Covid map is ‘firmly’ set –

though conscience gerrymanders all.

 

And we’ve rethought our boundaries,

including ones we didn’t note

until they were decreed away –

or strictly reinforced.                                         

 

The British sorry-pardon-ex-cuse-me

is truly foreign hereabouts;

while proxy greetings Covid force,

(formal efforts, elbow-bumps)

are followed by instinctive touch,

a hand on shoulder or on arm

that fatal virus can’t restrain.

 

The paseo’s fairly full,

for who dislikes a seaside walk

in Spring and during holiday?

 

Domestic walls must pall with time,

and yearning for the natural,

with vistas wider than the street,

becomes a hunger then a lust.

 

Except, this is a construct too –

the walk is paved with concrete flags.

The vegetation on the fringe,

selected, not by wind-blown chance.

The beach is truly engineered,

its profile takes some maintenance,

I’ve seen equipment making it.

 

My morning bike ride’s crooked course

winds its way through dogs on leads,

runners, walkers, those stopped still,

respecting fleeting human space.

Even though my bike’s bright red

and I’m not inconspicuous,

some people find it difficult to judge

that I am not pedestrian,

and so, despite it being day,

I keep my shining, front light on,

to make the difference obvious.

 

My ride complete.

I realize that nothing on the way,

has made this Easter more, or less,

than any other day,

when those who could,

came to the sea.