"What's lost is lost" and "Covid: the essential arts"

What’s lost is lost

What’s lost is lost. Ordinarily.

Care home visits pass by unremarkably,

Clocks tick the dragging school day to a close,

And wasted seconds, minutes drip the hours away.

Can what’s lost be redeemed? Extraordinarily?

Downcast Joseph hauled from pit to palace.

Wicker-basket Moses plucked from reeds. And

Saves a nation slaving, sunk in grinding toil.

And a rabbi, consumed with love of God 

And a passion to bring it back new, fresh 

From the gravest brink of failure, rises up 

From Calvary to kingdom come, right here.

And redeems right here our Covid-blighted 

Losses, all now brilliantly transmuted:

Hand held - touch exquisite like a first touch,

Class drinks learning in now, wisdom-thirsty.

Plumbers, we solder up those dripping leaks of time,

Treasuring what’s saved, what’s found, ground fine by

Loss, the grit that polishes: the pearls of every day.  

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Covid: the essential arts

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Sculpture: your faces carved

By twelve-hour shifts in PPE,

Lines chiselled in by patient,

Masked and visored selfless

Care, unstinting.

Dance: the doorbell’s ring now

Choreographs the pas de deux: 

Love rushes eagerly, grand jeté

To your courier-suitor’s courtly 

Bow, two metres back. 

Painting: disinfectant, mop & pail

Your workday palette, early, late;

Brush-strokes confident and quick 

Build layers that obscure the virus   

Roughly sketched beneath.

Music: the shop’s tills beep their

Melody, Da Capo al Fine. And re-

Repeat. You: ringing up toilet roll

For masked and queueing choir

Panic-buying, agitato.

Drama: as children of key workers

Tread your classroom’s lockdown 

Boards. Six characters in search of

Knowledge, bubbling, in the wings

While Covid struts the stage.

Good and faithful artists, these long 

Muse-months of turbulence, of grace 

Distilled to care, your gift our richest.

Not lost, your love’s creative labours: 

A priceless offering.

The first poem, entitled 'What’s lost is lost', examines how God, who specialises in redeeming people and situations, might redeem ordinary everyday things we have lost or missed during the pandemic, and transform our renewed experience of them.

The second, entitled 'Covid: the essential arts', celebrates the lockdown contribution of essential workers and expresses a hope that our appreciation for them and their contribution will endure.

Jeremy Bevan is a 60 year old civil servant. He works in London and has lived in Earlsdon for over 35 years, and is currently training to become an ordained minister in the Church of England.