Edna is an artist, art therapist, counsellor and travel journalist from Auckland with an MA in Art Therapy (overseas) and a BA (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Auckland. Her writing includes short stories, travel writing and non-fiction. Her poems have been published widely including The Poetry NZ YearBook 2021 and Poetry for the Planet Australia.
 
Our records show
   you are due
for your eye check  
                     you are due
         please ring our rooms     to make an appointment
                     for your eye check
very important that you have this check
or you risk becoming 
blind
don't you freeze now - 
ring
come to our rooms
our rooms are relatively safe
we are doing our best 
PPE and the rest
because we know 
you might catch the virus and die
but at least
you will be looking death in the eye
        because you are due
for your eye check
           when the world is frosted glass
and you only want black in front of your eyes
the records show
you are due
to check your eyes 
so you can
see

​


















​Paddy Richardson is the author of two collections of short stories and seven novels. She has been awarded four Creative New Zealand Awards, the University of Otago Burns Fellowship, the Beatson Fellowship, the James Wallace Arts Trust Residency Award and the Randell House Residency. Paddy is a mentor and assessor for NZSA. Her latest novel, 'By the Green of the Spring’, will be published early next year.
 
I am picking up my grandson, Oli, from his drumming lessons. While I wait, I listen to National Radio. Today, there has been one covid community case found in Auckland. On the drive home I tell Oli and he tells me how Covid attacks the body, how anti-bodies ‘go nuts’ trying to fight it and how they end up destroying the body they’re trying to protect. We talk about vaccination, about anti-vaxers. We talk about the right to choose but how personal choice might affect other people. He’s a twelve-year-old boy, immensely interesting, in his knowledge and humour and ideas. We talk idly. One case in Auckland doesn’t seem all that significant.
 
But it is. There’s a press conference. Jacinda’s steady, confident voice contrasts markedly with the visible concern on her face.  It looks as if Delta has made it to New Zealand.
 
And here we go again. Lockdown. The one o’clock conferences, where we watch as the numbers climb and now, dammit, it’s spread to Wellington. The analysis. The clamouring questions from the gathered media. Do they really want answers or are they merely trying to make a point? Never mind. Everyone’s excitable. Everyone’s stressed. It’s a bit of light relief when somebody asks Jacinda about the safety concerns relating to sexual intercourse during hospital visits.
 
As for me, I’ve not long returned from clearing out my mother’s house in Nelson after her recent death. I was looking forward to coming home, being with my own family again, catching up with friends. I thought, maybe, I’ll get some writing done over lockdown. Instead, I find myself languishing on a sofa like a Victorian invalid.
 
Clearing out Mum’s house was physically challenging, the emotional journey harder still. Tucked away in her drawers were her swimsuits. Until the last year of her life, Mum swam every day from Spring to late Autumn in the sea at the bottom of the street. We both loved swimming, both loved the sea. '
 
It was the china, crystal, embroidered linen, silver, the ornaments, that I found hardest.
So many precious possessions which had accompanied her from Northland to Christchurch to Nelson to Dunedin. And back her treasures came again to Nelson, when she and Dad moved into their house - (brand new!)- to reside, finally, in the glass-fronted cabinets. The pretty tea-sets, the pieces of Wedgewood, the embroidered table and tray-cloths I could remember Mum working on at night. Listening to serials on the radio in our house in Christchurch, the hoop with the fine linen stretched across it as Mum created tiny flowers from bright-coloured silks. I found her wedding dress, exquisitely hand-stitched.  In her wedding photos, Mum is beautiful, radiantly smiling.
 
Mother-daughter relationships, though basically loving, can be tumultuous, frustrating, distressing; there is the urge to both connect and to pull free. As I drove away from Mum’s house in Nelson and began the long journey to Dunedin, I felt overwhelmed with sadness, anger as well. Was it her or was it me? We so rarely understood each other. So often, we disappointed each other. And now, now, I ’d given away so many of her precious things.
 
But it was the good things Mum’s precious belongings, those which signified our closeness I chose.  In level three, the boxes arrived. My Nana’s beautiful Royal Doulton bowl, the pretty cup, saucer and plate set I bought Mum for Mother’s Day from Woolworths for two shillings and sixpence, the tea-set made from frail, see-through china Mum and Dad were given as a wedding present, the small crystal glasses they brought back from London after their long- awaited overseas trip to Europe. The tall, multi-coloured glasses they bought in the ‘sixties when they discovered Pimms was a much nicer evening drink than sherry. Ah, such sophistication. 
 
And Nana’s bowl. From Devon, to Tangowahine, to Christchurch, to Nelson, to Dunedin. And to Nelson again. In every house it was placed on a table in the hallway. Always filled with flowers.  My mother loved flowers. And now it’s here with me in Broad Bay, Dunedin.  Vibrantly coloured in deep blues, greens and gold, it has survived and witnessed much. I have it beside the window in my living room, facing the sea. I’ve filled it with orchids.

​Piers Davies has been a poet for many decades and a scriptwriter of feature films in New Zealand and Australia. He is co-cordinator of Titirangi Poets. As poets seemed to be especially affected by Lockdowns, Titirangi Poets are producing Ezines that mirror poetic feelings during COVID-19. This poem from March 2021 reflects the influence of a survey of great American writers of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries which found that playwrights are more likely to be alcoholics and poets neurotic.
 
POETS ARE MEANT TO BE NEUROTIC
 
My obsessions are getting worse
at first it was the choice of cutlery
then glasses and Crown Lynn plates
and what about the 2 white ducks
splashing through the poisonous creek
can they survive the toxicity
who will feed them during Lockdowns?
 
Now I scroll the internet obsessively
for every COVID mini-update
checking that everyone scans in
and keeps their social distance.
 
It would be so much better
to be an alcoholic playwright
lost in a befuddling whisky haze.