A Happy Tomorrow

A fog came down over Edinburgh
the other day and
still hasn’t left.

It swept through Mumbai,
lifted to Lagos,
And sat again on Monday.

It doused many fires along its way
that burned with the pulse
of life.

And soon the honks and blaring sirens
of all the world were silenced. The lights
and smokes and all the blokes who
walked the streets were
gone.

Yet through the dank I see home still,
the yawning distance between us hid
by the awning white fog insipid.

Home, where I need not travel to be;
home, where the battlements of hope
stand unshaken by covid winds; home,
where from sunlit pages good Ovid sings

high through the night in the key of hope,
clear through the white the unyielding crescendo
of a happy tomorrow.