City-life Longing...

PAD Challenge day 16; For today's prompt, write a city poem.

My lockdown-weary city-daughter moved home to the country at Christmas.

At the beginning of March 2020 we enjoyed a visit to the city never 

dreaming what lay in store!

She longs for the city

Halls, noisy and gritty

For feet tapping tempo to time’s tick and tock

For crowded street vendors

And loud, eager spenders

For ‘too many people’ on every sidewalk

For ‘get-ready’ bustle

For workaday hustle

For buses and trolleys with no standing room

For coffee-shop chitchat

For faces to look at

For store-window gardens in prosperous bloom

Dinner-reservations

What-to-wear frustrations

She longs for the city far from childhood’s house

Where she lives in waiting

For numbers abating

With her loving mother, a country mouse

She longs for the city

Before the sad pity

Of covid left ‘city-life’ dead in its tracks

She strolls rural borders

While work-from-home orders

Compel her to take a deep breath and relax

She longs for the morning

When Public Health warnings

Have faded into words like 'remember when'

When full business hours

Will blossom like flowers

And she can move back to the city again

© Janet Martin