If your garden grew a plant that won you fat
glossy rosettes, coffee, wine, drugs, and chic
bistro salads nine months a year between the
paving slabs whether you coaxed it or not,
wouldn’t you drop to your knees and touch
your forehead to the driveway, kiss the lion’s
tooth and wet the bed with joy, sappy as pop?
Wouldn’t you blow off the clock, tell the time
you want to leave your job and get filamentous
achenes tattooed on your wrist instead? The neighbours
sigh and say I have gone to seed, but I never had the plot.
Header Image Credit: Jane Murray Bird
Jane Murray Bird
Jane Murray Bird studied creative writing with the Open University in Scotland, gaining a First-Class Honours degree. Her work has appeared in magazines including Hippocampus, Magma, Mslexia, Under the Radar and Prole. She lives by the sea in Edinburgh and is equal parts flâneuse and garden hermit.