Literary Vegan

I read Emily Dickinson on the hill that leads to the heath - where I knew there would be  poetry  in the oldest green, peering out of branches,  hovering somehow - God is on the ground, she said and I found a fox all spiritual red and wild, brushed triangles sniffing in the twilight grey - It enchants me to stillness just to be near Eden's ghosts like this. Gripped by creative novelty, I wanted the crows to hear music,  so I played them 'The Prophecy', to interpret how they wish - I wondered if it was their first time hearing  Taylor Swift in this clearing And the lyrical coincidence  of her being related to Emily - As I sat in the long grass, already  rhyming 'rising strings' with 'glitter-black wings'...  We've lost her! My friend suddenly says - and I am sitting between   the poetry   of animal eyes  and woman-made lines, a fox's nose and a forest prayer  wondering where my own words fit amongst them all.  C. LJ Ireton,...

I drink tea by my seedlings - contagious desire in tiny pots.  I notice everything - the ceanothus blue by my feet, ceramic heat at my finger tips.  Don't you know, silver is one minute with lavender when you love yourself, gold the warming of your thighs under the sun? I remember Hyde park in the heat as a young woman, lunch on the grass - He had left me. I spent my flower time then not even seeing them;  the worth in anything - but growing the question of him; second by lost second into my mind's entire sky.  C. LJ Ireton 2024

To get to know a part of the land you need to feel the water  With your skin , I said And we put our bare feet, our hands; blood lines cut from bramble stinging with the touch, into the bronze-tinted water of the hills - a cold incarnation of its ancient self. We washed off the mud of sunken soil, with the source's own water, coin-like and tumbled down from the white stone heights of the moors. See? I said as we felt the ritual of the wanderer, the sisters - This is the starting point for stories. C. LJ Ireton 2024 (To Stacey)

We are just two souls, sitting amongst the young stems and old shrubs in the sun. I think of us in Eden - long-toothed lions talking together then as you answer me now; a sound saying you love being outdoors with me when it's sunny. But then we don't say anything  - we are the creatures lying down side by side, here and in that somewhere place  with green and gold light sky on skin and fur, even feathers shading reptilian eyes - Where humans don't take a life, we listen, lamb-soft, And live.  C. LJ Ireton 2024

One pause in the rain incessant - I breathe in the after air, watch two wagtails hoop a bow over the water. The moment was theirs to tie and worth my tread under moody, volatile skies, the wait. C. LJ Ireton 2024