This is a guest post from Kelly Thompson.
A Lockdown Poem.
I like our firm, I really do,
Floors 1 and 4 and 3 and 2.
From the far-flung branches to the basement and canteen,
the cubicles and boardrooms and stairs in between.
Piles of papers and mile-high files;
Books and computers and trolleys in the aisles.
From all of these things we’ve had to flee,
To work from home and stay Covid-free.
The clicks on the keyboard, the ping of the lift,
Those mundane sounds would now be a gift.
When I work alone in my solitary room,
the only other faces I see are on Zoom!
My wine supplies are dwindling, grey hairs growing out,
I’m starting to rethink what life’s all about.
It’s not about the hustle and the bustle and the rush,
The work gets done without the stress and the crush.
Awareness grows in the pauses “in between”,
the quiet time, the stillness, and nature so green.
Creativity flourishes, the mind expands
and humans just must find a use for their hands.
So I work and I walk and I bake and I eat,
And then I do it all again the next day, on repeat.
I’m a lawyer, a teacher, a mother, a cook,
I entertain myself with Netflix, I read the odd book.
But still something is missing, something’s not quite right,
There’s a niggle that’s waking me up in the night.
Going paperless is fabulous, family time is great;
So what’s bugging me so much? (Was it something I ate?).
Then it comes to me in that space between asleep and awake,
The thing that is causing my poor heart to ache.
It’s the people I miss, the chats and the smiles,
Even the grumpy ones, I miss them for miles!
A cup of tea with a colleague, a shared laugh in the passage,
The absence of these is surprisingly savage.
So upon reflection, it seems this much is true:
I don’t mind not seeing floors 4, 1 or 2…
What I am actually missing is all of YOU!
A guest post by Kelly Thompson.
Kelly is a partner at Adams & Adams Pretoria.
