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.)
Rebecca Lehmann
Pastures New
At Preston Fields, what will we lose?
Should we preserve the farmer’s field
for a view of open space?
Nature’s spirit left there long ago.
For this is barren land –
dirt laced with chemical feed;
crops sprayed with poisons
infecting our water and bones.
Dusty pathways of diesel tyre-tracks
monocrop, cut and drop
fling putrid muck from prisoners
whose sickly flesh we suck…
What of the hare, the deer,
the ancient bear?
The burdock, vervain and elder tree?
The long barrows, henges –
the druids’ church?
The pulsing soil, throbbing with life?
This is what we’ve lost;
This our collective grief.
Where modern man builds
Earth is gouged and gagged,
crushed under brick
with tarmac smothered
dry concrete and plastic lawns
brittle shards slice tender worms
starving in the flint and sand.
Yet still there’s space
to improve upon that barren land;
each plot a new Elysium!
We shall grow lush gardens
brimming with flowers and food,
noisy with birdsong and insect wings.
Let us invite nature’s spirit
to take up residence with us again.
Rebecca is a Kent-based poet, who began writing poetry in 2018. She reflects on themes of disconnection from the natural world, creativity, spirituality and the link between them. She intends for her work to speak to the sense of unrootedness and unrequited grief many of us feel day to day in the face of mass extinction and the global climate crisis.