The Gentle Day – a poem by Clive Donovan

The Gentle Day

After all the danger of getting here
to this refuge,
the day's goldenness seeps
behind my eyes,
drowsy in the almost silence—distant traffic,
a child's cries,
and the river glides, as it has done, for
millennia.
As if on cue, now clangs the bell
—not the clock but
the one that summons the flock, the faithful
few, not waiting
for funerals to pay their just respects to God.
But I am new
here and baffled for the sound bounces off
all the buildings
as if God does not wish to be found.
But all the same
I will pray in gratitude 
to be alive
because it is not cold today
for we who sit
warm above ground.

Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Amethyst Review, Crannog, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.