A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Consider the Foxglove

Paula Aamli, London, UK

 

Golden Shovel, after Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx

My initial excitement at working there is 

gone, obliterated by compromises. A 

harsh critic of my life might define

this discomfort as envy, a failure to finesse 

my way past the point that delineates 

 

deciders from decided-abouts. Between

these two realms is a vast chasm and I agree, 

younger me longed to live in clover

with the higher-ups. Now I understand,

even my own middling life looks like a

fantasy. Random chance was my friend.

 

Today, in mid-life, in central London, I stand

staring at the plants in our garden. There's

a foxglove exploding with purple bells, so alive.

All week I have watched it unfurl its finery, 

slowly stretching from the leafiness 

of its broad base, up towards the blue line

 

of the sky. In the brief beat between

glory and decay is this plant's reality.

Its whole point of being is to be, and 

this is what I envy. Whilst I pretend

to be at peace, I have lost faith in the grand

 

unfurling of purpose through history. Youth 

wants so much, strives so much and never

believes in age, death or failing. You know

that's how youth is supposed to be, still

certain of a place in the unfolding story. 

Youth's future is a promise we should not breach

 

but our youth see an end approaching. They 

know we will have to teach ourselves to stop

choking the ocean and uprooting the trees. If

the old story of repentance was ever true, it

is surely true today. Is there a way to wash 

our carbon sins away? That would be worth

 

the cost of conversion. Can we change the

course we have been setting? An up-hill

path, steepening the more we resist the climb.

I am encouraged by the rising clamour. There's

“boardroom chit-chat” about nature, perhaps a

 

sign of hope, whatever the motivation. Fine

if capitalism “saves the planet”, if we confine

the level of pay-off flowing to the rich?  Holiness 

has always been a negotiation between

need and expectation. And still the foxglove

continues to unfurl, to make its brief stand,

 

stretching vainly to connect earth and sky. A

yearly ritual in which Nature happily wastes 

energy from the sun on this brief burst of

life-becoming-compost. And tell me, at your

own end, will you account so well for your time?

 

Dr Paula Aamli is a Humanities graduate with a Masters in Sustainability and a Doctorate in Organisational Change. Paula is originally from Wales, then Manchester, now living in London, UK. Paula's doctoral thesis, “Working through climate grief: A first-person poetic inquiry”, explores individual and institutional responses to the emerging climate crisis, using arts-based research and poetry. Paula has had poems published, or accepted for publication, in Allegro Poetry Magazine, Dissonance Magazine, Paddler Press, Shot Glass (a poetry journal of short verse), and Wingless Dreamer.

Two poems by Merie Kirby

Two poems by Eric Abalajon