The Hawthorn and the Heart - Isabel Lincoln
One of the Top 24 submissions in our 2022 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
The Hawthorn and The Heart
It is wild garlic time again
A time ephemeral that moves like Easter Sunday
A little earlier if the frost is brief
If the spring is damp
If the light is bright
We come to the first baby-hand leaves of the season
Tight balled fists
Chlorophyll-green
We infuse them in hot water
We drink them and they flush the winter from our bodies
Usher in the spring
Culpeper writes
Take hawthorn: to tend a broken heart
To open it once more
We pull handfuls of wild garlic
Fat flat ribbons
Select three-cornered leek with delicate fingers
One here, one there
Something in my ancient mind knows the alliums
Knows the smell and knows it to be telling the truth
We carry home our treasures
Chop the wild garlic fine
Toast sunflower seeds
Drizzle olive oil
And stir the verdant pesto into bowls of pasta
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It is true I hold the date you died in mind
I know
Where it sits in a calendar grid
Where it lies in relation to your birthday, and to mine
And where it nestles close to your wedding anniversary
But it is more true that you deteriorated during wild garlic time
Grew thin as the wild cherries bloomed
And died when the hawthorn blossomed
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Last year I gathered armfuls of the flowers
Filled vases in my room
And the sorry smell of hawthorn told my heart
Open wide
Spring is here
Isabel Lincoln
Isabel is a Forest School teacher, community gardener, novice forager and occasional poet. She dedicates this poem to her Dad.
