Roma Havers

Metasequoia 

I am selfish enough to follow you into the brush,
that musky common where the orchids bud from Amberley mounds,
and the canal, now groaning, dry with old ploughs
and lingonberry, where we turned back before we could reach
the source — the Thames Head. How did you find me,
even here where I have bolted to recover
the keys in the last dwindling, between the great calf-heavy
bodies of cows settling in for the dew? You will have to
come back each November, to watch the saplings
progress. Somewhere in my scatterings,
there is a Dawn Redwood stunned by its ardent
belief that it has to grow, and its equal shame that it must.

Roma Havers is a Manchester-based queer poet and theatre maker, whose work has been commissioned by Young Identity, Manchester International Festival, BBC Contains Strong Language, and UK Young Artists. In 2019 she was Poet in Residence at MMU Special Collections Library.