Evening in the fields comes earlier, the feathery seed heads of exuberant grass and the wide flung spider webs delicate with beads of the wet air, the meadow damp, and tiny globes of elderberry and hawthorn hang in high wild hedges. Smoke teases the air from another age and I forage, like centuries of women have foraged before me, to fill jars and shelves before the emptiness of winter.
I clamber between moss-furred trunks of knotted elder and apple, skirting hip-high nettles and my feet planted in the cider-soft carcasses of fruit fallen too soon, balance on bending branches, hair tangling in twigs, to find that I am here too late, and birds have stripped the canopy of its dark sprays of berries.
Joanna Hope Bricher studied at Dartington College of Arts and is now based in the North of England. She lives with chronic illness. You can see some of her lino and letterpress printing (and glimpses of poetry) at https://pennybloodpress.wordpress.com.
Eunoia Review 