Beyond the Margins - Sarah McPherson
Long-listed written pieces of 250 words or under submitted to the 2021 Urban Tree Festival writing competition on the theme of “trees close to you”
Beyond the Margins
Escape to green space;
take the path through the fence,
off the estate with its graffitied
shoebox homes, piled one on the other.
Pass the skeleton of an off-road bike,
burnt and rusting in the crook
of two blackened logs,
and skirt around the husk of a car
that wasn’t here the last time.
Ignore these, go deeper, beyond
the margins until all you can see
is tree. The silence of the leaves
drowns the drone of traffic
on the edge of hearing. Move slower,
down, then up, then down.
Take the overgrown path through
to where the valley drops away
and come out into open field, dotted
with forgotten remnants of council care;
hawthorn, apple, ornamental maple,
tangled in rosebay and bramble
and tall grass gone to seed. Turn
away from shouts and barking dogs
that put at risk the frail conceit that this
is more than an oasis in a brick desert,
and keep your peace.
Sarah McPherson is a Sheffield-based writer of short fiction and poetry. She tweets as @summer_moth and blogs at https://theleadedwindow.blogspot.com/.
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