..was written as part of the Nature and Poetry course run by Nelson Brook, the Poet in Residence of 2018 which was the path to my Artist in Residence position so big thanks to Michelle Lindson and Nature and Us for organising that.

2019 has been a bit of an odd year so far with a couple of sad family losses. A beautiful friend read me an excerpt from the book, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes about Woman’s meditation on her garden and the cycles of nature. It was comforting to think of death with this philosophy and my first ever (rough and unedited) sonnet was based on that.

Do I follow a religion? I have been asked

And I have answered the religion of the Garden

Where the truest of self is allowed to unmask

Where one has no need for pardon

Hands deep in the sweet smelling soil

A place of soul and psyche

Attempts at uprooting, an endless toil

Lucifer's bramble; forever spiky

But fear not the cyclical wild

And the Winters' mourning

Instead stay watch for the return of Springs' Child

For new life will be dawning

A forever cycle of death and life

Nature's meditation that need not bring you strife