Poetry

Greensand

You built your home on greensand,

chalk-ridged and sister-hilled,

dreaming over again your family’s

songlines, in bluebell copses

and sunstriped beech woods.

But you shook your roots, tapped

and feathered, trailed them west

to where the air was easter-scented

and you were five years old

again, making miniature gardens

from moss, pushing forget-me-nots

and primroses into stolen egg cups.

In the river-bound valley you hear

trees, vellumed by moss

rise up,

lichen-mottled

to speak to the light,

fern-shrouded

and whispering

in the primal dark.

You find the flowers of your

girlhood in the swerve

of the lanes, sound

out their echoes,begin to gather new songs.

Poems in Performance

*Trigger warning: Pregnancy loss