When this is over
Will you remember those Thursdays
When you poured from your homes
Paused on your doorsteps
Poised to mark your support
With your hands?
Will you remember how,
In common cause with your neighbours,
Albeit socially distanced
In your separate booths,
You fisted your pens
To place your cross
In the box
For the party that promised
To purge this nation
Of the Hydra-headed pox
Of socialism?
Will you remember
Electing a government
That rejected a pay rise for nurses
Was hostile to migrants
Stockpiled missiles not masks
Concreted over green spaces
Sneered at health and safety legislation
Privatised social care
And, bit by bit, sold off the NHS?
…………
Anne Goodwin has published two novels and a short story collection with small independent press Inspired Quill. The pandemic has pushed her to jump species from fiction with her first published poem since her school magazine at the age of thirteen. Website: annegoodwin.weebly.com