Peter is an Emeritus Professor of Community Psychiatry at Imperial College, London and a consultant in Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. He was formerly the Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry where he wrote a regular column strewn with rhyming doggerel. He now feels he can graduate to poetry, and sonnets attract him by their need to convert complexity to order.

Awakening

Where are we?  Still in epidemic mode
Fenced in helpless by edict and control
Thwarted daily from our intended role
So we look ahead, our hope bestowed
On the shining dawn when the open road
To freedom's pastures will at last unfold
A time when enterprise can fill the soul
When we no longer let a microbe goad
And steal the lives of those we love away
Prisoners awake, soon no longer bound
By the bleak orders that you must obey
Instead all can line up in close array
While waiting for the glorious horn to sound
Our welcome to the darling buds of May