A Planet Where
by S.A. Leavesley
S.A. Leavesley is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and journalist. Overton Poetry Prize winner 2015, her new pamphlet, How to Grow Matches, is forthcoming with Against the Grain Press in 2018. She has been published by the Financial Times and The Guardian, on Worcestershire buses and in the Blackpool Illuminations. An occasional climber and surfer, she also loves swimming, cycling, walking and being outdoors.
A Planet Where
Imagine the wind grabs fistfuls of leaves,
a creak of trees loosens our moorings,
then our garden lifts up at each corner.
The lawn’s rugged shimmer of green Wilton
rises from parched soil and floats over the fence
with us in patio chairs and pants on the line.
Stems bent sideways to sudden tassels,
roses, marigolds and poppies fly with us,
up, gentle as steam from the day’s
first cup of tea. Behind us,bare earth
and our house: a bold full stop
in paragraphs of tarmac and brick.
Neighbours turn their heads, but no
chance to wave. We’ve floated free
from cities and time…drift over fields
of bee-rippled clover and slow rivers.
Our eyes follow the flow backwards, up
hills and scree to their untapped source.
Still we rise, high enough soon to feel rain
in our throats. We gulp like fishes.
Below, land shrinks to a patchwork
of meadow grass, untarred beaches,
sturdy cliffs and oyster-plant shingle.
Apples grow untouched.
Our carpet of garden now flimsy
as a cotton sheet, we gaze down
at the telescoped world. From here,
it looks a planet where we could settle,
fall in love and build ourselves bright lives,
lives of more than polluted star dust.
S.A. Leavesley