This Leaf - Penny Dedman
One of the Top 40 submissions in our 2023 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
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.”
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.