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