March 1999
Everyone is panicking about millennial catastrophe,
anticipating computer failure on a global scale.
All the clocks will stop, North, South, East, West;
the moon, sun, oceans, will descend to chaos.
With everything that’s going on around us,
I’m not really getting very much sleep.
I keep people informed with regular updates
by changing the answerphone message.
I’m keeping a sort of diary because
I’m sure I’ll want to look back on all this
once it’s become ancient history, so to speak.
That came out wrong; didn’t mean it like that.
The woman next door is practising the organ.
Friends are rehearsing what to say, how to be.
But this March is turning out to be our last.
How can anything ever come good with you dead.
Pat Edwards is a writer, teacher and performer living in Mid Wales. She has been published in Obsessed with Pipework, Picaroon, The Rat’s Ass, The Fat Damsel, Ink Pantry and Amaryllis. Pat runs Verbatim poetry open mic nights and is curating the 2017 Welshpool Poetry Festival.