I’m resorting to poetry (of a sort) to help me figure out my feelings on having returned to England after many years away. This was the result.

Bad Altitude?

Breathing soup-thick air 
beneath the nearly-always grey English sky,
my life has reached a new sea-level low, 
a damp depression I can’t rise above.


Remembering the fierce cold bite
of Swiss mountain air in winter sun,
I regret my voluntary loss of altitude
and ache for my spirit to soar.


Until, breathe stolen by a gale,
facing into the storm-whipped sea 
pounding the seawall beneath me,
I hear the heartbeat of home.

©mike finn 2020