Repotting

The garden is in full bloom, and the houseplants need constant water as the temperatures rise and we approach midsummer. It’s my favourite time of year. I love the long evenings and try to ‘live’ outside as much as possible, eating in the garden and staying out until dusk — although I haven’t quite managed to find a way to write all day in the sunshine if I’m using a screen. (If somebody could invent a way of doing that, I’d be thrilled.)

What I am already thrilled about is being published in the Vole Books Spring Anthology Can Spring be Far Behind? published this month.

It was a surprise to discover that I had been shortlisted in the Dempsey & Windle single poetry competition, and then highly commended for my poem ‘Repotting.’

The judge, Jeremy Loynes, said ‘the metaphor was ‘simply achingly beautiful and wonderfully worked’. How lovely to hear that about your own words.

It’s been a little while since I unleashed a new poem into the world, so it was a real honour to be selected for the anthology, and to receive such feedback.

It’s a wonderful anthology, and you can buy a copy at the Vole Books website.

Repotting

A philodendron stayed its height 
for a year, then shot up six inches 
in a month, with rich compost,
roomy new pot and fresh, sunlit spot.

Yet I always put this off too long, waiting 
until it's no longer a straightforward task.
My daughter asks to stay out all night 
at a party. I hack at plastic masquerading

as terracotta while trying to protect 
delicate tendrils, feel the sickening, tell-tale 
snap and know there’ll be root damage. 
White snakes, like slithering intestines, 

curl around clogged soil with nowhere to go. 
Yes, I say, and look away.