HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Gordon Gibson
Near Sleep, Within His Arms
Near sleep, within his arms,
she dwells upon the nature of their love:
a living thing, a forest tree
with boughs that touch the sun.
It whispers in the softest summer dawn,
it bends but will not fail in winter winds.
No wild fire will bring it to the earth.
Joyous to her the first green flush of spring,
precious the burnished fall.
She has no fear of creeping things
that burrow blindly, silently,
and spread the spores that will infect the heart,
cause it to wither and decay,
leaving a hollow and a brittle shell.
Gordon Gibson is a Scottish writer, living in Ayrshire. Forced by disability to cease lecturing in higher education, he now writes full-time. His poems and stories have appeared in a number of print and online journals and anthologies. He blogs here.