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Revd Pat Tatchell. |
As a Member of the Royal British Legion, I receive regular weekly reports of RBL activity from the local Sittingbourne and Milton branch included in which is a prayer from the branch Chaplain, the Revd Pat Tatchell.
In the last report, the Chaplain offered her prayer by writing the parody below.
Gerry Lewin
“As a change this week I offer a parody of Wordsworth’s Daffodils.
My prayer being that as we look back on this time we can be thankful that social distancing will have kept us safe.”
The Dance of Distancing
(With apologies to William Wordsworth)
I wander'd lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er empty streets,
when all at once I saw a crowd
of people queuing for their meats,
beside the store, beneath the trees
dodging and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the stony shore,
they stretch'd in never-ending line
along the margin of the store:
so many saw I at a glance
keeping their gaps in sprightly dance.
They moved aside and gave some space
as starlings in a murmuration.
No one competing in a race
but moving round in odd rotation
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude;
and then my mind with memory fills
that dances kept them safe from ills.
Pat Tatchell
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