An ode for seafarers stranded during the coronavirus pandemic 

The face of a merchant seafarer lost to the sea, The Merchant Seaman’s Memorial in Cardiff Bay. © Girl Wander

When we go to the shops with all the food on the shelves,

We buy what we want, in sixes and twelves. 

For the strawberries and others, we buy out of season,

We expect them to be there, on the shelves without reason. 

Anchor butter from New Zealand, via the Panama Canal,

After a month at sea, arrives with us, somehow. 

There is our fish caught at sea, in treacherous storms,

By fisherman, whose risks they consider the norm. 

Or the meat and the wheat, we receive from ...