Behind the shed in my childhood garden:

a corner of land like a secret room. 

A carpet of brambles, bluebells, and bindweed, 

privet walls, and a ceiling hung thick with catkins. 

I dared myself in, tested how long I could wait, 

tensed and breathing in liminal air:

a space more than ordinary, lifting me out of

everyday life with the twirl of a sycamore seed. 

Repeated journeys through the gap in the fence

(just wide enough for my child-body) 

always ended in the church car park

but did not dissuade me from believing 

the next trip would take me somewhere else. 

Surely, as soon as I turned my back to sprint 

to safety down the lawn, my mouth full of

the green taste of chlorophyll and my beating heart,

things born from the decaying magic of the compost heap

blinked their eyes and shifted in the leaf-litter.