Perhaps the hedgerows have it after all – a poem by Daniel Mountain

Perhaps the hedgerows have it after all. 

When I was nine, I was jealous
that my friends knew God and I didn’t. 
I told them I would find him in a hedgerow. 
They laughed, but I persisted. Some nights, I prayed
to my bedroom ceiling by the apocalypse orange
of a suburban streetlight. Nothing. 

But summer days spent flat on grass, tracing
the arc of the sky with my hand, feeling the entire
rock of the earth bracing my spine, or afternoons
following root to stem to leaf and flower, watching
my shadow dance on every open page, 
warm evenings spent staring at stars 
millennia of light dappling my retina. . .
Those were the days of knowing.

Daniel Mountain (@danmtn) is a writer and teacher based in Cheltenham Spa.