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.)
Alison Jones
Heart
Today, we live on the boundaries
of the forest, sewn with lost
and hidden places, deep enough
to fill whole worlds. Don’t fall in.
Ghosting faces wait to claim dreams,
the moss croons lullabies,
snarled branches beckon
to the waiting moon. Beneath trees
solid and reassuring, your feel may
find the path, and sound it clearly,
and you pause to realise that
you are looking for a song,
made of antlers and granite
that holds moonlight across thousands
of years, and gathers forest dreams
like aging clothing, leaves curling,
grass clippings lying lost in the garden.
Maybe this is the thing you have always
been looking for, the relief of running
into tangled roots, and not looking back.
Perhaps this is what all our stories
are made from?
Alison Jones is a teacher, and writer with work published in a variety of places, from Poetry Ireland Review, Proletarian Poetry and The Interpreter’s House, to The Green Parent Magazine and The Guardian. She has a particular interest in the role of nature in literature and is a champion of contemporary poetry in the secondary school classroom. Her pamphlet, ‘Heartwood’ was published by Indigo Dreams in 2018, with a second pamphlet. ‘Omega’, and a full collection forthcoming in 2020. For more information about Alison’s books and work, check out her website.