It's been March's job too and in fact, it has occupied several months so far. Not every day, but present enough in my mind, like the tiny lion in the corner of the shed window.
I've been rediscovering poets from my bookshelf as I work my way through chapter headings, amending them and my synopsis of each, finding poems that will help make sense of what I'm writing about reading.
I'm no theorist, I don't like rules, in fact I realise I've spent my life resisting rules and joining nothing but a trade union. I've stood in the corner at parties, challenged the status quo and cut my nose off to spite my face, as my teachers might have said decades ago.
But if nothing else, this lockdown we're all in has given me space to think. I'm not writing poems or stories, but I am able to read and build up the layers of this draft, which moves from childhood to this moment now at the end of March, when one day it's warm enough to lie in the hammock and the next there's snow, then it's melting and the sun's out again.I'm hearing of friends of friends who have had the virus, I'm reading first hand accounts written by people I know. I sat to eat lunch with my daughter and it was too difficult to talk about the days to come.
I'm now prepared to wait for an hour or more for the supermarket. To shop once a week. I am focused on this draft and planting seeds. This time last year I was looking after sheep and walking around an enormous estate in Mallorca, house-sitting. God it was a nightmare at times for all sorts of reasons but I had two weeks of almost total isolation. I walked, I wrote, I weeded and I shouted over the walls. Then I had visitors. It'll be a while yet, won't it? But I look forward to those meetings with friends again.
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