Advice for girls who wake up smelling smoke: the fire isn’t lit yet, And if they come to take you to the pyre scratch every bit of them you can get. Even executioners have eyes. I’d advise you to drink honey in the mornings to keep your voice sweet No one came when you screamed
Tell the bees that I have died, They used to say that if the hives weren’t told of a birth or death in the family they would leave the keeper, So there is no need to lie. Tell the bees I am no more, Bees in the house can be a sign of good luck
I have spent so much time on war, The more time I spent singing for peace The more I became a piece of wasted fury, Maybe not wasted when anger is A fundamentally logical response to injustice, But if it’s just this then your activists will always burn out, There’s no doubt there’s cruel work
When you walk into a psychologists office they offer you a seat a glass of water and a stupid question: how are you? Fine. How to begin? At some point I learned how to walk, younger than most, started out running my Nana tells this story about an open front door and
Rain so light, call it mist Gathering on me almost unnoticed Except for my glasses And the pond’s splashes And where it bruises the apple blossoms. Call it misting, a soft day, For lingering in the back doorway, Too damp to be out long Too fresh to miss the garden And apple blossoms at
Celebrate saving the less charismatic Write odes to plankton, snail and flies, Our love of birds and mammals may be automatic, But we struggle to value lichen in our lives. It’s harder to to sing of fungi than tigers, Hard to remember the worm in the earth, Diversity means algae as much as flowers So
My parents are gardeners not by trade but by passion, And I was raised to love plants and climb trees but I was afraid of creepy-crawlies and often found myself retreating into my cave. And my mother says when her hands are inside the soil that is how she goes to church and it took me
This is a beginning that will be repeated again and again and again This is a story that is being retold, the same but new Beginning is the oldest thing you know how to do Again, again, again. Beginnings are births as messy and painful or sometimes Bright light at the end of a tunnel
Persephone’s term begins the year’s dry lament Even while nymph’s paint gold dead leaves on the cement They force the evergreens to stay to cloak Demeter’s curse. That steals their father, Hellios away to freeze a solemn earth. Light begins to fade and skin begins to chill We reap what summer made and hope
Track, track, track. Those little red brick bungalows Allotments and flats Suburbs and leaves Track, track, track. Get out of the city, The sun on a hill, Cow, cow, sheep, Old man reads Backpacker sleeps. Track, track, track, Hedgerow, Corn row, Hedgerow, The sea. I’m gone, gone, gone, Or going back, back, back Forest, flowers
