A 61 with headphones Driving down the A61 from Sheffield to Chesterfield I turn off Elgar’s Nimrod and I pull into a layby. I leave the car and with the dog on the lead I find a gap in the hedge and descend through an archaeology of cannabis, strata of clay pebbles and plastic bags. …
Author archives: pasdelasbas
cow parsley
Parkwood flustered with cow parsley So evidently frail like a mind fog in the trees A scent slightly acrid steams this head
to be
through the trickle of it all through the treacle of it all it just comes to be
bearing…
Damn it I’d forgotten then I read about you and straight back you came tearing my eyes like life thank you Damn them The Dead Bringing so much life To bear
Not Yet
what’s on your mind? I asked. After some thought It’s just… What is it I asked putting my hand on his shoulder… It’s just…When is the end? Not yet I explained and I don’t know when but not now. We talked about wheelchairs and stairlifts and all the other (in)conveniences that were better than the …
The view, tiny fingers, silhouette twigs,
Love you He didn’t say Which made no sense When he knew he might But such risks jeopardise meaning So better knots in the belly They last longer Innards of time
Of mushrooms and maggots
Which is the finest wild food? This changes with the season but one mushroom—the cep, the porcini, known in English as the Penny Bun—has risen from the forest floor to stake its claim. I’ve been dreading writing this: the story of the king mushroom. The problem with ceps is that they decay very quickly. When …
The Myth of the Nettle
What is it that holds us to the earth? Sensing gravity, giving it meaning. How do we grow roots in a place when we don’t quite recognise the smell of the soil? Angga came to the UK in 1997 as a child, a minor, with his sister, two brothers and parents, his father a doctoral …
The Elusive Pignut
Seeking a small, chickpea-sized tuber above Bradfield. As I walk through fields and woods in the valleys above Bradfield with a group of friends, I stop various people innocently walking and ask them what sort of wild foods they collect, if any. The responses are what I might expect: blackberries, wild garlic in the spring, …