POTS outdoors

by Ali Rowland

Compression threatens to explode something, 

a vessel, or the skull; blood, or grey matter 

sprinkling, fertilizing the hot soil 

snoozing in my raised beds – I wouldn’t need 

to feed again this season.

It’s not that dramatic, really, 

it’s sun-heat thwacking me, dizziness 

its maid-in-waiting. As I try to rise from 

tending, pulling, mulching, pruning, it forces 

me to hover halfway up, unsteady, 

leaning on a stake that shakes. 

I won’t die, it’s a feint attack, 

I could faint, at worst; an Edwardian 

lady’s hack in a twenty-first century 

allotment. Instead, I stagger to the shack, 

put my legs up higher than my heart, 

disturbing countless spider’s cocoons, and

the birds, wondering what I’m doing here at all.

Ali Rowland lives in Northumberland, UK. Sometimes she writes about life with mental health issues, but just as often her prose and poetry is about the world in general. After being published in over fifty magazines, and winning two poetry competitions, she is coming dangerously close to regarding herself as an author.