This World, My Love

I want to tell you about beauty

and how cynicism can be broken by beauty,

in the same way that greenery pushes through paving and cement

because it must

and because it needs to breathe - like all of us.

I want to show you that weeds are the greatest mavericks of all,

I want to show you how to hold soap bubbles in your hand like a ball.

I want to show you the mist in the Ystwyth Valley,

rising up like steam from a bath

and stand with you under the rainbow’s broad-cast,

backflipping ribbons of colour with the flamboyance of a gymnast.

I want to show you the starlings over Old College

pegged across the apex of the roof,

before swooning us over the house on a Thursday afternoon.

I want to tell you that when I was ten years old,

I daydreamed about flying home

and at thirty six - I still do.

I want to show you the pine trees,

splaying their Spring needles

like freshly lacquered nails.

I want to tell you about the valiance of dandelions

and the courage of snails crossing paths in the rain.

I want to show you how soil can seem black - glib almost

and then flecked with life overnight,

how calves emerge - slip-sliding into the field

and dancing on stilt legs like sprites.

I want to show you how a seed becomes a tree

and the tree becomes the sky,

how a sneeze shakes and shockwaves

a congregation of the shy.

I want to show you how rain traces every last contour

and listen with you to the hail,

as it raps on roofs like a thousand hooves

thundering across slatted frontiers.

I want to show you how wind flouts borders

and water breaks rank.

I want to show you how to kindle fire - for fire is life.

I want to point your eyes to the horizon

for the horizon never lies.

I want to tell you about faith,

how to give it the biggest space

and fear -

a tiny corner of the room.

I want to tell you that if you watch the faces of sleeping people,

they reclaim all peace, all innocence of the womb.

I want to whisper with you,

in the amplified silence of snow

I want to show you that in the quiet,

you will always know.

I want to run with you in weather,

for weather makes everything better.

I want to tell you about beauty

and how cynicism can be broken by beauty,

in the same way that greenery pushes through paving and cement

because it must

and because it needs to breathe - like all of us.

Jemima Roberts

Listen to Jemima read This World, My Love - here.

Jemima is a writer/poet/artist. After a number of years travelling about the world and bobbing about on boats, I now live with my 7yr old son near the coast in West Wales - a stone’s throw from where I grew up. There is something about West Wales which slips into your bloodstream as a child - and calls you back.  

Today I feel supremely blessed that we live far from the buzz and bustle of cities I’ve lived and loved in in the past, to the ultimate triptych of mountains, forest and sea - all close-by.