Blue-Green Algae

It’s nature poetry, so it’s pretty, and it’s ugly.
It’s us at our messiest, our most incongruous.
Running around. Running away.
Learning that there is nowhere to run to.

In this meditation on flora, fauna, fire and failing relationships, birds flee, trees hide, gargoyles weep, Arcadia grows ever more distant, and we – humans that we are – see fit to plant marigolds and dig up dandelions. Cook chickens and swoon over kingfishers. Protect the game birds then shoot them for sport. Build walls, fell trees, and squeeze the sublime out of mountains. Partition the planet into that which we might control, and that which we might idealise, gaze at. Regard the world, regard each other, through the lenses our parents gave us, seldom stopping to simply let things be.

But hope springs eternal; and we still have time. Just.

Author Biography

Rosie Driffill works as a writer and psychotherapist. Having spent years writing about language, sustainable living and mental health for various publications including the Guardian, Wanderlust and Therapy Today, she began exploring the same themes in poetry; her debut collection Seeds is about nature’s demise and the flaws in human nature. Rosie describes her memoir as being almost as accidental as her illness, but insists poetry is ‘unflinchingly deliberate, a fully-furnished comfort zone.’ She currently lives in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.