Blue-Green Algae by Rosie Driffill

It’s nature poetry, so it’s pretty, and it’s ugly.
It’s us at our messiest, our most incongruous.
Running around. Running away.
Learning that there is nowhere to run to.

In this meditation on flora, fauna, fire and failing relationships, birds flee, trees hide, gargoyles weep, Arcadia grows ever more distant, and we – humans that we are – see fit to plant marigolds and dig up dandelions. Cook chickens and swoon over kingfishers. Protect the game birds then shoot them for sport. Build walls, fell trees, and squeeze the sublime out of mountains. Partition the planet into that which we might control, and that which we might idealise, gaze at. Regard the world, regard each other, through the lenses our parents gave us, seldom stopping to simply let things be.

But hope springs eternal; and we still have time. Just.

Valley Press