Exeter Community Garden

Shears, loppers, secateurs.

So many names for things built to maim.

Blackberry brambles, grasses,

ivy, willow, weeds:

enemies of the state.

A sacred duty to disrupt.

And there is a purification in the work,

the ache,the bodily move,

the pull, the plunge primal.

Cathartic action in destruction

— for the purpose of growth

of course, clean sharp needles of green —

but even if it wasn’t necessary,

or cycle, or process,

still there would be satisfaction

in creating the carnage.

To input maroon energy

into the deep forest green.

To cause change to happen.

To watch plant matter fall away.

There is so much power in you

and your blade.

Here we are in the garden,
folded into a small nursery of light
where daffodils and hyacinths
thread through damp grass.
 

Here we are in the garden,
where gloved hands sort and sow
carefully peeling away the dead
to give room to life.
 

Here we are in the garden,
watch the willow root down
trusting their way through darkness
into the sweetness of the earth.
 

Here we are in the garden,
listen to the birdsong,
curl into a cup of tea,
sit in the softness, the soil, the still.

We start with an inch and end with a mile, 

So please pay attention, just for a while, 

We're mostly on land, but dip in the sea, 

I'm the naughty in nautical, the A B of sea, 

12 inches - 1 foot, and 3 in a yard, 

It's really that easy, not very hard, 

Also 6 feet in a fathom you know, 

But just in the watery depths down below, 

The yards in a chain are 22, 

Cricket pitch length for me & you, 

Put 10 in a line which is oh so long, 

In horse racing terms, 1 furlong, 

So trot & canter, past 6, 7, 8, 

And the mile is completed at a galloping rate! 

But if you're at sea, & I hope you're not spent, 

Coz the nautical mile adds 15%, 

or a minute of latitude wherever you are, 

By ship sailing home from islands afar.

But if all these strange numbers fill you with dread 

Go for the metric units instead!

Walking down the path,

the garden beckons us all.

Happy times await.