<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Early stages<\/strong><\/p>\n The ferns look happy, healthy They must have craved nurture at the start. Now they\u2019re established, fending for themselves. No-one would uproot plants, These have settled in. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Steph Morris<\/strong> is a writer, translator, artist, gardener and cyclist, graduate of the Poetry School \/ Newcastle MA in Writing Poetry. He lived in Berlin for many years, now based in London where he was poet in residence at Bonnington Square and House of St Barnabas with the Poetry School’s ‘Mixed Borders’ project. twitter: @herr_morris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early stages The ferns look happy, healthy and green in the damp gloom. The birches have grown strong stems to rise to the light, above the roofs. They must have craved nurture at the start. And those acanthus will have needed protection from the bully-boy slugs till they got their footing. Now they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17709,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17613\/revisions\/17709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand green in the damp gloom.
\nThe birches have grown strong stems
\nto rise to the light, above the roofs.<\/p>\n
\nAnd those acanthus will have needed
\nprotection from the bully-boy slugs
\ntill they got their footing.<\/p>\n
\nSome input in the early years is all it takes,
\ntill a root structure is in place, enough
\nto secure the nourishment surely there.<\/p>\n
\nturf them out of a pot they\u2019ve filled
\nall their lives, and expect them
\nto survive alone in open ground.<\/p>\n
\nThey have found the light,
\nthose that seek it.
\nThe others their shady corner.<\/p>\n