The Retired Doctor’s Allotment

Look at that necklace of cherry tomatoes bright as
hedgerow berries strung along vines of bryony
his harvest festival of marrows and tasselled sweetcorn
a wealth, a diverse burgeoning abundance.

How different it is from the wrecked soil of the farmed fields –
panned earth, a wide waste of dead stalks,
the hedge, flailed low, barren of bird food;
unloved, the land worked for money only.

Sarah Watkinson is a plant scientist with a 2012 degree in creative writing from Oxford University. Her poetry has appeared in print in Pennine Platform, Tips for Writers and in anthologies, and online at the Poet’s House, Oxford, The Stare’s Nest, Fake Poems and Waterlines. In 2014 she was second in the Swindon Poetry Festival Competition and shortlisted at the Ilkley Literature Festival Poetry competition.