This Leaf - Penny Dedman

One of the Top 40 submissions in our 2023 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.

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This Leaf

“This leaf is from
the gum tower
parched with the
antipodean habit of thirst,
sending suctorial root-
snakes lickety-split,
deep down under,
slipping and winding,
sucking dry the garden.

Oh they slither
and slip, splitting the bricks,
scour the mortar,
shifting and heaving
the heft of the house.

A storm cracks
shaking the crow boats
from the sea of leaves;
shattering the spindle fingers
of the branches,
rattling and scattering
a yellow slew of spears.

The rogue Ghost is faultless
but unkindly placed:
a migrant spire retrieving the sun
from a grey English sky.”

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Penny Dedman

Penny Dedman lives in London, and is a writer who was reunited with her first loves, poetry and the turn of the world, during Lockdown.