Five Pandemic poems; Blackbird rainbow (ink image), Housewoman (ceramics), Ironing in the dollshouse (watercolour pencils), Magdalene egg (icon) by Frances-Ann Norton

Five Pandemic Poems
by Frances-Ann Norton: –
Solitary
At the bird sanctuary
Writing practice
Closing the chapter
Icon eyes.
……………………
Solitary

I could be a fifty-three-year-old woman living post-cancer.

In a world where cancer is suddenly not the biggest, baddest virus on the Block.
There were so many emotions as I dealt with a growing death within me.
I was horrified that I had been harbouring an enemy in my breast.
My habits during illness were self-imposed quiet and solitary days.
The lore of stay home and stay safe.

Now everyone experiences this
in the time of lockdown,
in a pandemic.

………………
At the bird sanctuary

Its so hard growing up, my beautiful brave girl.
The moment you were put into my arms after a long labour
I knew you were a fighter, an old soul, determined and singular.
You withstand your greatest health burden with magnanimity, dignity and stoicism.
You are not afraid to have unlikely friendships and have a strikingly different image.
You choose a career where people and empathy and hard work are at its core.
But today you picked unnecessary fights and stomped off at the bird sanctuary.
I wondered if this year, the first away from home,
the first year of university, might have been a strain, an anxiety, full of pandemic regulations.
A limited amount of contact with peers and lecturers. A lot of time on your own worrying.
So I give you a day of grumpiness.
Later that evening after a soothing afternoon of quiet
we sit together watching an animated film hands interlaced, your head on my shoulder.
I bless the day, bless my family, bless my children, bless my husband.
We are the pieces of a wholeness which is all gift of the Abba.
………………

Writing practice
My writing is piecemeal.
Doled out one evening at a time.
A slow dripping that drives me mad.
Other times it is tangential to procedural writing.
Poetry is a bath at the end of a long work day, warm, invigorating, cleansing.
Even my dreams have dried up during the pandemic.

My visual stimuli is so limited that I cannot think of anything to say to myself
Emotions and feelings are more adequately expressed in
a black Malovich, a white Ryman or a grey Martin.
The inscribed gold in Martin’s Friendship, 1963 is the eternal matrix.
This minimalism is what the pandemic tests in me.
A meditation so grumpily adhered to.
A silence unpicked by the pecking of my thoughts.

My writing practice ought to be strong pen-strokes of genius.
Every line gold and silver.
Every word a crystallization of experience, knowledge, good, wisdom.
But here I am trying to write about the Word.
The Word says
“Only I can contain such beauty, such eternity, such power and poise, such escape”.
………………………..
Closing the chapter

That day I sat and dreamed all day.
That day I suddenly looked up and realised spring had arrived in all its zesty green finery.
That day I realised my children’s schooling is coming to an end.
Finally both my children are completing their compulsory education.
I feel like I have been standing in the playground for 15 years.
Waiting. Looking for their return to me.
Seeing their faces, like rock pools reflecting the sun or the rain above.
No more school bus at 7am.
The music classes drawing to a close, no more Arvo Part, Scott Joplin, Mozart.
No more piano scales, singing exercises, clarinet warm up, beating drum practice.
The swimming sessions in the dark, far behind us,
no more football practice, although short-lived.
No more ballet class soft baby hair in a bun.
No more celebration assemblies
where we bow our heads, and we bow our heads and we bow our heads in prayer.
And the spill back and flow forwards between church and school,
school and church.
Lets me know that we belong, that we are community, that we are strong together.
But this school season is over, finished, not to be repeated in their life time.
They are onto new things, wider worlds, new horizons.
I knew it would come, I just did not know how.
We are eighteen months into a global pandemic,
and this is the marker by which we will say,
“That was the year of lockdown”, or
“Oh yes that happened during the time of covid”.
………………………….
Icon eyes

A small icon of the Theotokos – Mary.
The eyes are long ovals which shine with and interior light.
His image is my personal, portable, paradise inscribed and written on board.
Each painted layer affixed with prayer, a snapshot of time.
Icon eyes are beyond time.
They are a constraint, a shape, a system, a tradition.
They reflect the one who looks, the one who prays, in this lived moment on earth.
During the pandemic, time shifts.
It is stretched and slowed down.
Seasons roll by, through summer and deep winter Midwinter.
Through heat and cold, cycling as never before.
As I sit, and sit, and sit.
In this chair, at this table, on this screen.
And time is all we have together.
And time is all I need to create.
And time is all I am.
I want to visit, see people, speak together, be in community.
These icon eyes on this board wait for me to remember
who it is that has infinite time, eternal presence, radiance of being.
These eyes prepared with pigments, speak of earth, life, libation, joys and tears.
These eyes question my motives, gentle my soul in distress, are a lake of peace and serenity.
They challenge me to let go.
Just let go.
These eyes point to eternity, the answer to my questions, the only place to go.
These eyes see me and radiate good, life, hope, pain and suffering.
These eyes have lived their own extraordinary life.
They comprehend transformation and forgiveness.
…………………………

I am an interdisciplinary artist working with ideas of spirituality in a secular context. I make drawings and paintings, icons, quilts, textiles, ceramic sculpture, poetry and am a folk fiddle player. These are vehicles for my abstract and narrative images. I experience the world as someone with imagination and through tactility, relationship colour and form. I work with well known stories to explore the rich and complex visual markers inherent in the traditions and rituals of the culture I inhabit. One of Celtic forebearers, Yorkshire Gothic, brought up in a household of Bohemian artists and musicians contextualised by the beauty, spirituality and generosity of Franciscanism. I ask myself, does our day to day existence represent a neat motif, a perfect device, a blemish free composition? Or is it the variations, the imperfections, the mishaps and diversions that make the story interesting? Creativity enables me to express, among other things, deep joys, fears and hidden imaginings.

http://frances-ann.blogspot.com/https://francesodonnellpoetry.blogspot.com/