This poem was published in Dreich magazine December 2022.

Past the sheltering Stobshaw Hill
moving through two gates, one wood,
one iron, otherwise very much the same.
Rain glistened elderberries, hips, haws welcome her in.
She nods to the skylarks, sees their prior claim
takes only enough to make a syrup for flagging hearts,
thinks on how her pigs will crunch the waxy haws
as children eat sweeties, smacking their mouths, jaws apart.
Birches now like lemon lollipop trees, as leaves prepare to fall.
Further in, inhaling fresh scent of pine and spruce
Jo’s fingers nip the needled tips of the young branches
into her basket, woven from last year’s hedgerow produce,
to store as winter tea, antiviral, releasing energy to dance.
At dusk the pine trees hold onto the light, like candles,
in return, give their seeds to squirrels, mice, and birds.
Her gaze follows their straight tops, bare of branches
like TV aerials, tuning the sky in with the earth.