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New Writing
Miss Jekyll’s gardening boots, 1920 (William Nicholson)
Sarah Wright
These boots mean business –
no pussyfooting here:
these are serious squelchers,
facers-down of mud and weeds,
predators and poor opinions.
Garden’s sturdy wonderwoman
kept feet firmly on the ground
in these, while scooping rainbows
into flowerbeds, weaving waves
of colour into gardeners’ minds,
sowing a floral revolution.
The camera caught her gravitas,
but she drew the line at portraits,
‘No-one ugly should be painted.’
And so, appropriately, her working boots
are eloquent in paint on her behalf.
Nowadays, reliably and pinkly
opulent, the beauty of her namesake
rose, the nation’s favourite,
each summer celebrates those bolshie boots
in ordinary gardens everywhere.
SARAH WRIGHT is a retired teacher who lives in Cambridge. She’s had poems published in Acumen, South and The Daily Express, and tends to write with pen and paper, ‘usually on my knee.’ She always carries a notebook, just in case, and alternates her writing with her main addictions to reading, gardening and daydreaming. She would like to live near the sea and mountains, though she acknowledges this might be a potential recipe for rain.
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