Manchester: How Green is our City?

How Green is Our City?

Crocus Books

First published in 2024 by Crocus Books

Crocus Books are published by Commonword, Bridge 5 Mill, 22A Beswick St, Ancoats, Manchester M4 7HR

Copyright Commonword and the authors 2024

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Manchester: How Green Is Our City?

This green anthology of poems and other creative texts was written by the people of Manchester.

Manchester has been proud to call itself the world’s first industrial city, yet the side-effects of the industrial age, and the throw-away, consumerist habits that came in its train are all being faced today. Sea and waterway pollution, global warming, the depletion of natural resources and shrinking of natural environments have set alarm bells ringing worldwide. We are now faced with a fight for the future of the planet.

Commonword has been at the forefront of literature around green issues – we published our first anthology focused on green issues ‘No Earthly Reason’ way back in 1989. The time has come for a new anthology bursting with new ideas and enthusiasm for greening our futures.

Ozone Anonymous

I wandered lonely but did not see any clouds. There was only rain up there & the steam traces of planes; and the baby crying in his buggy. He bawled his cries at the sky. All the clouds were in my head and came home with me.

“Me and you, kid,” I said, “me and you and the ozone layer.”

A Colourful Past

Chandni Brown

Green lurks in this city. In hidden windows in concrete cages, In vegan cafes and conscious consumption.

It’s in people’s hair, In their clothes, In their minds.

It’s in spray cans, The ones that adorn our city walls From the surfaces of the northern quarter to the depths of an underpass.

But red lurks in the history books. In the bricks of the factories, And the price of revolution.

In the prick of a spindle, And the birth of an industry, It was red that once seeped in the streets and the water.

…And red which gave rise to many colours but green.

With blue it sailed off across rivers and oceans, Resting in beds across faraway lands.

With blue it made prints for the world to make fortunes, For blood to get bluer off broken, chapped hands.

With black it rose up to the heavens and skies, Through people and coal with sooty smoke eyes.

With black it left footprints still clear to this day, Weaved stories of profits and extra keen minds.

But green was forgotten. Trampled and paved, Compressed into paper in economical ways.

And this city, revolted, Did what it does best.

Fought for faces and voices, ideals and the rest.

Fought for women, For workers, For cooperation and learning.

…But where is that fight, now the whole world is burning?

We walk through our city, And there’s peace among pieces, Fractions of action, When a revolution is needed.

If a city could change the whole course of our history, See everything turn on the tip of a thread. I ask you now, while more action is needed. When will it turn green the way it turned red?

Untitled

Abigail Herron

In Manchester, city of hustle and flow, Where concrete towers stand tall in a row, Amidst the rush, a whisper is heard, Of nature's plea, in every word.

Beneath the shadows of termite mounds high, Lies a call for change, reaching for the sky. For in this urban jungle, where dreams collide, Biodiversity's plea cannot be denied.

Amidst the bustle of streets paved in gray, Nature's voice beckons, pleading to sway. For the heart of the city beats with life, Yet biodiversity's struggle cuts like a knife.

To COP16's goals, we must aspire, To protect, preserve, and never tire. For Manchester's soul, in nature's embrace, Lies the key to a sustainable race.

So let's weave green threads in our urban scene, Reconnecting with nature, vibrant and keen. For in biodiversity, our city finds grace, A haven for all, in this bustling space

ALL GONE NOW

Linda Downs

The summer holidays lay before us a magic carpet of possibilities sun dancing across the brook it’s shimmering light glinting across the pebbles as if they were precious stones

Skirt tucked into her knickers my sister wades into the crystal-clear water scattering the Sticklebacks, she’s come to catch one arm and her tongue out for balance the other carrying her green mesh net

I am on the bank

my feet nestled in the verdant grass holding mum’s jam jar tightly between my small hands as I watch her tiptoe in Everywhere around me is alive with life as drunken bees their legs heavy with pollen sip one more, Wild Orchid for the road Dragonflies flit over the brooks mirrored surface

Torvil and dean swooping and diving in competition with the swifts before resting on top of the bull rushes to dry their iridescent wings

A soft plop as the smooth skinned frog falls into the water he calls throaty and course to his mate while the grasshoppers chirrup a love song

The willow tree dangles its limbs into the cool and inviting edges of the brook

Blue and willow tit hang upside alongest its leaves

My eldest sister is courting her girlish laughter carries from the rocky bridge where she sits leaning in close to her latest boyfriend I shield my eyes from the sun to watch her, long brown limbs dangle just above the waters edge

She’s wearing a daisy chain necklace he made her

A buttercup in his hand he asks if she likes butter the golden reflection of the flower caught against her pale throat she kisses him

The air heavy I lay down on the bank watch a ladybird lazily crawl across the clover Here amongst the quaking grass is a whole world in miniature ant’s and beetles go about their day collecting food uninterested in the flight of the butterflies

red admiral, peocock and meadow brown feast along the nettles

A tiny wren calls from the thistle before diving to the ground her mouth full of grub she returns to her nest

a hungry brood of chicks awaits, hidden away amongst the sage green hedge

My sister calls for the jam jar, triumphant in her catch

I remember it all as if it was yesterday

The brook, the fields, the trees

All gone now

All gone

Untitled

Angie J Morrison

I’m drowning in plastic

I see no more joy

From the straw that I suck

To that McDonald’s toy

I’m drowning in plastic

We need to get rid

Of the aerial pods and Coffee cup lids

I’m drowning in plastic

Don’t tell me it’s crap

Don’t cover your butties

In poisonous wrap

There are fish that are dying

Your killing them dead

As you snaffle your yogurt

And butter your bread

There are birds that can’t fly

It’s all ‘cause of you

That cheap plastic raincoat

That Croc of a shoe

There are oceans polluted

A Dying Barrier Reef

Sir David Attenborough is giving us grief

He’s talking sincerely

But we just don’t hear

With cheap plastic headphones stuck in our ear

I’m telling you this

It will tear us apart

You’ve even got Banksy

Shredding his Art

No one will listen

They just frack the sea

Point in the other direction

Say: “hey, it ain’t me”

I’m drowning in plastic

Or is it all in my head?

If we don’t all take notice

The world will be . . .

Buddleia Semaphore

Lucy Power

In Manchester, the leafy beacon sways in mill roof gutters on forgotten land. And nodding flowers signal brighter days

when this plant was the latest garden craze to propagate, proliferate, unplanned in Manchester. The leafy beacon sways

and smiles, and drops its seed on alleyways to build fresh plots – quite out of hand, and nodding. Flowers signal brighter days

of lawns and shrubs and soil, and no driveways. But now their roots cling on to prime wasteland in Manchester. The leafy beacon sways

and waves to butterflies and bees, who gaze at spectacles of fresh stems, tall and grand, and nodding flowers. Signal brighter days:

raise meadows on the roofs, and grow a maze of luscious, scented streets and pastureland in Manchester. The leafy beacon sways, and nodding flowers signal brighter days.

Eggshell and Husks

Jo Flynn

I have become obsessed with hares, pinecones, eggs, animals, plants- anything so long as it lives and reproduces. The seeds of a dandelion clock lifting off into the air, seemingly aimless. Eggs in the starling nest, dropped on the driveway, ransacked by magpies. Raising vegetables from seed and eating them before they’re ready in my fever, impatient and hoping to learn something about procreation from their flesh. Tough knuckles of kohlrabi get plump, fat and purple even in this harsh and foggy winter with no light. The chard never ending; prolific in its ability to throw up new leaves as soon as you can pick them. Blood purple veins against lush green leaf threatening aliveness. So much so I think it will crawl out of the soil and send a sneer my way as I hold nothing in my body for safekeeping.

Nightcrawler

Jo Flynn

Eat soil, shit soil, are soil. Move through mud, churning and absorbing.

Nutrients and colour explode as you shimmy through a lace of no-space, so compacted even light can’t reach it.

Breathe earth, dance earth, shape earth. We meet briefly, eyes on pink belly. Trowel aside, weapons down as we just be together for a moment. You writhe away, back to darkness

Giants

Joe Hunter

This was a low-down town once, until they built the mills to spit out smoke chew up cotton, and people too it was a low-down town, long before me.

Now in the heart of this dirty old town that once was a low-down town grow rising towers of glass and steel proud towers that stand over us.

But look along the streets and the canals look between the towers and the walls and see the green giants towering there as if standing guard for you and me.

We live among trees, we always have among giants with fingers of green giants anchored to the broken earth waiting for the end of history.

A tree is not made of steel or glass it cannot build a mill or spit out smoke it can only stand, and guard, and wait breathing the same air we breathe.

One day this will again be a low-down town all the proud towers will be dust but the trees will still stand guard here long after we have gone.

Forgetting / Future Memory

Harriet Lander

Do you remember what it was like to go outside?

Remember when we walked around the park, that park, wait, yes, I think it was that other park, across the city, down that road, just on the edge of Greater Southern Manchester (not quite Stockport, definitely not Trafford, my geography isn’t as good as it could be or might be if I had really studied, if I had really spent more time with Google Maps rather than outside in the air).

Remember when you and I held hands, or didn’t hold hands, or thought about holding hands, or laughed, did you laugh because I certainly laughed, that great big rousing thunderclap of a laugh, and we, I, collected pinecones, and conkers, and saw a double rainbow and, if Piccadilly Gardens counts as a park (it almost definitely doesn’t in this poet’s understanding of a park in Manchester), remember when we sheltered against each other from the rain coming in from both sides.

Do you remember what it was like to go outside when it was so hot our faces were as radiant as angels’, and we were beatified in the sun, it made us holy, and we were at the edge of one of the largest parks I have known in Greater Southern Manchester. Angelic, waiting for another way to be together, to be outside, to remember what it was like to go outside from the future, from our vantage point that’s yet to come.

Homeland Security 2018

Kate Richardson

In Hulme ASDA packing shopping

I met a sad man

Missing, grieving his homeland

Cradling, head in hands

Distraught

Manchester is so ugly

My homeland is so beautiful

Looking at the brewery, belching fumes

And Princess Parkway burping exhausts

I thought…he’s got a point

I told him, I missed his homeland too

Of visiting Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron

Washing lines in Bethlehem

Shovelling stones to make concrete in Deir-el-Asad

Deir-el-Asad? He said with excitement

I have been there

It is beautiful and there are many families

Yes, I said you can find beauty everywhere

And I told them of taking the tram to Sale Water Park

Walking through the woods by the river

The sunlight through the trees

Sitting in the long grass watching

Yellow trams zipping across the River Irwell

With a backdrop of urban graffiti and quacking ducks

Fallowfield Loop

Where you can walk or cycle from Gorton to Chorlton

And see no cars, not even one

Of Alexandra Park

Having a cup of tea watching the world go by The boxercisers

People running and cycling

Watch children playing

Oh and the dogs, all those dogs

The sad man’s wife said, Thank You

We will get on our bikes

And, we will go and find the beautiful places of Manchester

And with that, we finished packing our shopping

And I took my trolley, full of first world problems

Back home with me.

Green Belt Black Belt

James Lawton

For the people of Royton and all other Greater Manchester green belts under threat

My mates and I grew up down Thornham Old Road, past the Summit pub and the fishing pond; it was freedom and fun, by the bucket-load and formed in us all an unbreakable bond.

We explored the fields and built rickety dens, we faced our fears and we rode BMX. We learned how to fight, we learned about friends, (we rarely welcomed the opposite sex).

Me and my pals played over on Hanging Chadder, sledging in winter, and footy in spring; remember, back then, nothing made you sadder than sunset and hearing the nightingale sing.

And Tandle Hill, with gleaming monument tall where dog-walkers and protesters amass; those knolls and vales were mother to us all –a verdant heaven for the working class.

I still walk those lanes and memories march back of a childhood well-spent, long days in the wild; but now it seems that this is all under attackthis blessed plot that once bloomed and beguiled.

You see, the council have let the contractors in, reaping fear and community quarrels, bulldozing the past and chucking it all in't'bin, all while wearing hi-vis and low morals.

So, you in the hard hat, as you sip on your latte, know that we'll fight for the feelings we've felt; We’re not green and, yes, we do know karate, and we'll defend our land wearing this black belt.

THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?

Ian Sharpe

One billion Striving Sapling Shoots

Reach out their arms, Lay down their roots

The planet breathes an airy sigh

To see such hope reach for the sky

The toxic ways of sordid man

He knows no aim or master plan...

For growth that one can not sustain

Is nothing but an empty gain

'Tis a crazy, daft assumption

Never ending mass consumption

Can still go on until we drop

The world we love will someday stop

I must go on... 'til ends my rope

And wash beneath fountains of hope

For saplings need water to thrive

And I'm so glad that I'm alive

One billion striving sapling shoots

Might save the day, like parachutes

But where might all these seedlings be?

It's you my love... It's you and me

The manic ways of sapling man

Can change the world, yes we can!

But somehow we must learn to know

A cleaner, greener way to grow

It can be green

Darren Knight

I sit in the car, on the Manc. It’s slow.

I look out the window, big buildings all aglow. The trains aren’t running. I tweet, I smirk. It can’t be green. Public transport doesn’t work.

Chanel came to town. The whole place full of glitter. I walked down Thomas Street last week. Full of litter. Throwaway fashion brings in the flash.

It can’t be green. We need the cash.

The water is dirty. The sewage runs free. Down through the gutters. Out to the Mersey. Our waterways just aren’t safe for swimming. It can’t be green. Shareholders are grinning.

Cans of Nitrous Oxide strewn on the floor. From Heaton Park to Whythenshawe. Wasted highs. Littered floors. It can’t be green. Take a pause.

Wake up Manchester, we can all do better. This wonderful city doesn’t need to be wetter. Don’t just send a Tweet or your MP a letter. It can be green. Lead the way, trend setter!

The Ballad of St George

JC Ashton

St George is shaken from his two-year slumber.

He wakes to a shocking number

Of people in grief, people in mourning.

The Swallows circle in the sky above

They have returned.

They tap on the windows, on the walls

St George! St George! The church bells are ringing

To announce the presence of the Dragon

The Dragon The Dragon The Dragon!

Listen to the calls, the weary singing

The crops are failing

The air is thick

The rivers are drying up.

St George’s loyal mare was weeping, for she had witnessed the suffering Of many majestic creatures that lay on the paths of Albion.

The Swallows tell their tale.

The Dragon is much larger and fiercer than anything you have fought before, St George.

It stretches for thousands of miles, across oceans and canyons, Through the mountains, valleys and cities.

Its tail swipes away whole villages.

The Dragon is given much nourishment from the Money Men to keep it strong.

It feeds off the sticky thick black pools deep inside the earth.

The sewers and drains and pipes are opened into the streams, to let out the rot

The Dragon’s favourite dish.

The fish and amphibians choke, Children grow pale and sickly Cancers spread through the populations.

The tall chimneys spew toxins into the air,

Thick with ash and dirt, people struggle to breathe.

The Dragon licks up the trails of smoke.

Its teeth pierce the lungs of newborn babies.

The screams of the Witness Tree are caught on the wind, Her arms are slashed and broken in two.

The Dragon is revitalized.

St George listens, and his fury grows.

Why have the people waited for my return?

Why have they not risen up and tried to fight this monster?

Do they not love their Green and Pleasant Land?!

Oh, some try St George, cooed the Swallows.

They try, and they are stopped by violence, laws and fear.

The Dragon’s Demon assistants whisper into the ears of the people.

Reach them through their television screens,

Telling them to ignore the suffering.

Stay home. Don’t argue. Don’t question.

Don’t demand the banishment of the Dragon.

The Demons are tricksters, St George, they wear your red rose.

St George sighed.

I fear, he said, it is too much for one person, and I am ageing.

As he spoke, a curious thing happened.

He was now covered in roses, of all shapes and colours,

An odd, yet beautiful looking rose bush indeed.

The thorns gently pressed into his robes and skin,

A few drops of blood dripped onto the barren soil.

From these drops new seedlings appeared.

Children. Beautiful rose-shaped children.

Swallows, go and gather the people!

Ask them to collect the remaining harvest, dress the trees, eat well, feel strong.

We shall then go parading this fine morn!

Together, as one, we shall show the Demons and Money Men

Our community strength!

We celebrate life and demand the death, of this Dragon.

Let them face us in the streets, as we scatter our flowering seeds greening the grey.

Let the weeds push through the cracks where we walk,

We will leave a trail of hope and love.

Unravel the flags, strike up the band, We shall show this Dragon how we will fight to conserve Our Green and Pleasant Land.

Hurrah! cried the Swallows and they swooped and dived. The people rallied, brought a neighbour, and found their voice.

The Money Men tried hard to quell the crowd.

It is no use! they hissed, for we will remain when St George is no longer around.

The Demons switched on all the screens they could find,

Trying to blind

To reduce people to a stupor.

BUY BUY BUY!

The crowd slowed their pace to a funeral march. We are the many, and you are the few, This, before, we forgot or never knew.

You kept us passive, crushed in the palm of your hand

We will fight you to save Our Green and Pleasant Land.

The Rose Children encircled the Demons and Money Men, Wrapping their arms around them, Digging in their thorns.

The day was long, but the people although weary, enjoyed their collective song. This Parade, says St George, it must continue each year,

For new Money Men and Demons will appear To trick the people once again. These climate creatures must be jousted at by all children, women and men.

We will not cease from our mental fight, Nor shall our tools sleep in our hand: Until we have halted the destruction, Of Our Northern Green and Pleasant Land.

Birdchildren

Julia Davis-Nosko

They told me never to come

Find you, our birdchildren

I have crossed the forbidden Silence. Crossed over and Settled my ageing body

On the park bench of time

Your young lives

Chewed into alienation

Now to mulch the words

Collect the moss, dig up

The red backed beetle

Blessing stones

Our birdchildren

Only you carry the memory

Of worm and feather over Smashed shelter. Eggshells trodden

Deep into autobahns

Of forgetting

Green Day

Leo Fitzsimons

Manchester, city of mills, coal, railways and canals. transform into a city of solar, hydro and wind! harnessing the earths natural flowing biorhythms, the earths natural ‘chi’, to provide power for… homes, workplaces and hospitals, trains powered by solar panels, local, organic food grown in nearby fields, replenish aquifers, build the biome and bio-diversity, boost the bees.

Use the atom (split in Manchester)… to guide the transition, quantum computing to manage resources, but safeguard to protect the netizens of this city, Peace & plenty.

How green is this city?

Acid green for the batteries we’ll need, Pretty Green for the clothes we’ll wear, Velvet green for the modest luxury we’ll live in, Gingham green for the possible restoration of the textile and fashion industries, Lime green and pistachio for the vegan foods we’ll eat, Sea green for the journeys we’ll make, Snot green for the respiratory diseases we’ll prevent, Bonsai green for the care we’ll take to husband our resources, Herb growing on every street corner, free weeds, free minds… Red, gold & green, shamrock green and Islamic green for a green swirl of communities working together, Emerald green for the alchemy we’ll need…

A restored landscape… England’s green and pleasant land will exist in Manchester

tree

Romany Stott

inside a live energy i’ve never held currents crack golden into the soil through the earth and straight to roots i haven’t touched beneath me not stumps not ashes but networks to before ᐧ to after to the hum of seedlings waiting to be let me be their topsoil their future roots i reach and reach and brush something new the ground turns warm and lights me up

the shadows

Romany Stott

to begin with people walk round it eyes never lifting from phones. commuters avoid it completely and are all late for work. the local mp says nothing.

soon it’s bigger than a pothole. lads on the corner start calling it the shadows and the name sticks. the shadows’ edge is for high-risk games of frisbee. parents shield their babies’ eyes when walking past and the student newspaper takes a photo that doesn’t develop properly. when a frisbee disappears all the children remember they need to go home.

the support groups insist that the shadows hold no power. half of people practise positive thinking and you can’t walk down the street without someone saying keep your chin up. others don’t care. they park right by the shadows anonymous hands in a wing mirror swinging bottles, clothes and traffic cones though they never hear the echo of a landing. finally, the council puts up signs.

then the tourists come

queuing down the street to take pictures and pretending to fall in. the people who can see the shadows from their homes board them up and refuse to leave. even without lifting the blinds they know the shadows are there a bottomless dark eye.

good people scream into the shadows that it isn’t real. the unemployed pray. there’s tape around it now police who look small and silly like lego figures. the church doesn’t explicitly say it’s god’s will but you know behind curtains someone’s dad blames the gay couple down the street. it’s quiet outside. roadworks don’t seem as bad as they used to. within the year it’s a crater tugging down and making the town bowl shaped. houses tilt and glasses slide off tables. what’s scary is you can get used to anything like eyes adjusting to the dark or your body after an arm’s lopped off. everywhere you go you hear people drilling furniture to the ground.

it’s best not to get close to a darkness that complete. you can see rows of people stuck there hours or days of forgetting where they were headed how to be why.

that’s how everyone is surprised by what comes next their eyes trained down when the sky cracks like an egg shell.

Heatwave

Sarra Cullen

Isn’t it glorious they beam

In Kyoto Agreement

The BBQ brigade

Dig out your flip flops

Ice pops

It's cracking flags It’s cornetto time

Waterbombs and garden slime

Not ice caps.

The inconvenient truth is,

I plaster factor 50 on your too white faces

From a bottle cursed to haunt your rightful places.

But your freckles unnerve and blare

Enough to drown the static

Premonition of your own sweet bairnes

Fighting for foul water and finding only plastic

The temperature charts rocket and soar

Like never before

Al Gore.

Our Victorian garden is in deceptive bloom

Soon, doomed.

No swammy swans left to sing a sing

We did you wrong, little ones

Your skins crisp up under scorched suns

With scorched earth

We'll wish we knew its worth

Stone washed Shakquille Millington

As the sea batters against you, The wind doubled up its might, Whistling a tune of consistency and bitter realities that you must battle against, The sun appears to bake,

Rejuvenate hopes once claimed by the other elements that have tried to take your faith away, In grey skies, there is snow to blame, Hard hail hits to pick out weak parts of your position,

Hoping you scatter or even break,

Mystified by the fog,

Unable to see clearly what traps lay ahead, Smashing into red lights that were too dim to depict, A crash is hopeful, desired and wanted,

Everything you battle against, Has washed your skin, Fell off like droplets, Taking microscopic segments with it, In the pursuit of claiming another victim, You look into the jaws of death with those stone washed eyes and you say, “I’ve been preparing for the storm all my life, Rip me up,

Root and stem if you must but if not, I will live to enjoy the next summer, On the coast, where I belong.”

The Humble City Creatures

Laura Patryas

I watch the iridescent flash of feathers as a pigeon struts along the pavement cracks, gleaming in the morning light like a jewel. Who are we to scoff at this humble neighbour?

The buzzing honeybee dances from flower box to wildflower oasis in the vacant plot next door. She pollinates the tiny urban meadows, unsung worker sustaining our growing things.

At dusk a streak of red darts by –a fox making his nightly neighbourhood rounds, cleaning up our leavings, welcomed sanitation worker. We lock our doors but he knows no fear here.

While we pine for exotic creatures worldwide, dreaming of jungles, savannas, ocean depths, we neglect the wonders dwelling among us. These are the true natives, at home in our realm.

Our hearts wake to the faraway species in peril but slumber to the kin struggling in our midst. We are here, rooted in this soil, this concrete. To cherish the wild we must cherish our own home places.

The beauty and resilience of our city's creatures is a mirror reflecting our own fortitude back to us. In caring for them we nourish ourselves, we till the garden of our own verdant community.

The Song of Ryebank Fields

Ali Davenport

It’s a small plot in the scheme of things. Unremarkable on old maps; unnamed. Ordinary history; field, claypit, recreational ground, then left for nature to reclaim.

Ryebank Fields.

Shadowed by city towers; new born, gleaming wealth. Cranes pointing arms to sky, proclaiming growth. This is prosperity, they cry. Raze that shabby scrub.

What counts is how things look. Wildness tamed; nature contained in municipal squares. What serves is how things seem. Fake grass preferred. Developers dipping plans in green; washing them through to rinse out the heart.

*

The city chokes under brick; reaches, dazed; tries to remember a time when it breathed before mill and factory, before its forging as an altar to industry. A story of souls yoked in smoke.

The memory of soil jolts its bones.

*

It starts here. This scruffy grass.

Lay down your hands.

Listen to the Aspen Grove; one tree, all clones. Baby to Pando but see its shape, a shield like its name in Greek. It has diamonds on its bark.

And look, The Fairy Tree! Magical hawthorn, rooted in folklore; spinning a glittery yarn or three. Can you see the glimmering?

The flickering in the brambles?

Those tangles hide gems; small birds seeking treasure in the brush, a bounty of insects in the mud, unfurling worms in this flood-absorbing ground. Old willow’s mossy limbs divine the gift.

You too can mine this land; tap the acorn trove and tell a tale of potential.

These fields hold so much.

Give to their embrace. Look up, where crows cross wide above the Nico Ditch. There’s history in this place.

This earth.

Breathe

this blessing of being away from rooves.

Remember how it was.

*

It starts here. Each patch in the city round from north to south: verges left, lawns mown less, weeds welcomed in the beds. It’s not the look that counts, it’s the wilder-ness

and the tending, oh, the tending, not with manufactured love but the care of re-connected hands feeling their way through leaf and stem through root unearthing ancient hymns awakening the quickening the rush through every road and street a honey kiss from north to south the city round lit up

with hum the shimmering hive the Manchester Bee reborn in new abundance

and where Manchester leads, the Chorus re-sounds

*

And when we’re done - and that time will comewhen nature reclaims the land, cracks the city’s concrete into crumbs.

When we’re long gone, what song will Ryebank Fields sing? It was a small plot in the scheme of things

but worth a city, worth the world,

these fields of gold that shone and shone

and shone

Through the Cracks

Sam Davis

Feels like forever I’ve been chasing light

Spending eternity deep in the dark

Try as you might; won’t be kept out of sight

A world without me would indeed be stark

Find a way through a crack in the pavement

A huge triumph on the smallest of scales

I’m small but that’s not all, I’m radiant Choking as I inhale, toxic cocktail

Now I’m high above the street down below

Watching from above as my kin rush past Miraculous that through this crack I grow

When did you all get so fast? It can’t last

All I need is a tiny little crack

I won’t be long gone, before I come back

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