Literary Vegan

There were waves today. But I was undeterred – I swam into the rise while it watched me,  then under the curve: unglamorous turquoise,  stirred with silt.  Standing, I could be pushed over, but I had already leapt, woven in – no floor to leave. I wondered if my spirit could mimic my limbs like this when waves surged on dry land; those that swell with no form, the force of unexpected feeling that is oblivious to the wind. C. LJ Ireton 2025

The heartbeat of the whale-throat sea  is slow, pushing a world's blood: blue heavy with history, into prophecy that licks into waves like a dragon's tongue frothy with wind and disbelief. But I believe – my red rhythm recognises something floating furious, my own pulse dances in the bigger beast's drum. And creature, we scream the dirt and silver of the storm, eroded limbs and salt-eyed strong breaking the line of water into a circle – myself into myself back up to the surface. C. LJ 2025 (Inspired by Six Wild Crowns)

Red Kite in the after-rain: a mountain-sharp survivor  of the apocalypse city – wild exists, wild lives  in your triangle stillness. Moth-tail, rust-tilt, lit-up by clouds, your feather-tips grip the wind itself; like you harness more than air – the whole sky is subject  to your clawed curtsey. I am – iron and balcony give way to dandelion belly, bird-bone beast. You do not warn. You pre-exist. Seagulls have just scattered at one glimpse of you,  gliding in from where God waits  with a gauntlet glove. C. LJ Ireton 2025

Just past the mountains, indigo at dusk,  the ducks form a shepherds' staff of finger-tip chevrons flying over  the string of filament lightbulbs bordering the lake. Innate order, bone high they complete a prophecy of mine that birds will always come over still water if you wait  but I wasn't waiting -- the sun upside down in my wine glass, a spear of hot star on blue stone, we spoke of salt nights and serenity while the ducks moved in the sky, knowing I needed them to prove my own words startling me with what I know -- forever poetry pointing weightless and breathing. C. LJ Ireton 2025

I knew I wouldn't stop loving you, wherever you were.  200 miles only on the outside. But I had no idea I would feel beautiful, for the first time, when you weren't around. That when I invited myself to the dance, I found it was waiting for me, wildflower in the mirror. LJ Ireton, 2025

Thirsty, growing seeds sigh into the petrichor cracked, damp shells let go LJ Ireton 

The tea-coloured soil is stiff, dry that giving-up line on the faded myth of spring I wake it with fork and fingers, twist the deeper dark out, blinking in the sudden, burnt light. Turning the un-oiled tin of winter upside down - I'm pouring butter potential  now, blood colours stir  the size of insect buttons. I pull cosmos dusk, ox-eyed daisy seed futures down from the borders  of my cobwebbed mind. My wanting to try was iced by the moon nights, you are the words I release with the trowel  for the ladybird to land on, the moth, any frozen spirit, needing to hear flowers after the silent cold. C. LJ Ireton 2025

These words run immortal. Red-ribboned bookmarks meet them, rivers journeying through earth and to the sky in hot words, released in breath. Bound temporarily between paper covers; they rain italic  along blue-gold evening fields —  whispered over the flowers given by those who know, or try to say, what love is. Never dead; fireflies in bookshop dust, everything I said of us is echoed, overlooking the aging lake — with pages closed, letters still dip and reflect the sun.  Inspired by Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven   C. LJ Ireton 2025

I'm nearly home. The pencil rose sky deepens then crescendoes with the honking sound of ducks and their echo. I spin to locate them and watch them rise heads low, bodies straight - eager shapes, discordant shadows. They call - leaving their kicked-up ripples behind, in black water. I'm silent, but my longing to distance the day from my returning self is just as loud.   C. LJ Ireton, 2025

I sink under the St David's sun - teasing yellow promise and primrose. Is it over now; the disconnection between bone and flower? I expose my stomach and toes to the hovering hot star  that's been haunting my sleep,  and set my arms free  from holding myself through cold, glass rain, unthinking weeks.  It will be a slow knitting; the time it takes for seeds, opening their eyes in the dark, to extend their arms of anemone - and I'm still numb under the divide. Spirit, wake, forgive the sky - the heated epiphanies stir once again in the soil -  I want to meet them barefoot, my skin alight and feeling.  Copyright LJ Ireton, 2025

There is a sin-like storm seconds away. Outside, the wind seems to swipe at steel and tree alike - the smoke of centuries  reveals a cold, petulant heart kicking at the air. I reach an arm out to the steadily breathing ground:  the animals near me. Their foreheads of fur are striped fields of wheat, pampas, poppies snoring in the sun. I trace one line of Eden with a slowed heartbeat - a fingertip of a vision, but the gale is shrieking now and I must hold the memory of grass.  LJ Ireton, 2025 

I raised the bunched daisies, dahlias and peach-pink gerberas; unassuming, with burgundy eyes to the moon. A reintroduction - we had all spent the day under artificial light and in the absence of roots grounded ourselves again In lace reflection,  star to star. On this icy night  after being on show to people here we are; silent, grateful wolves petal jaws, faces silver.  LJ Ireton, 2024

Green grace, creature air is a memory in this percussive smoke of a place. The snail, the pied wagtail brave the pavement; breathing spirals and stripes with eyes - a dip and slide of redemption smaller than my palm delicate, old world. LJ Ireton, 2025