Common Ground

Behind the block, the night tears in scrub-calls.
Fox kill scores the morning,
ripped by prints in muck.

There’s a form for this, a number to call,
an action plan, a statement
on how the city manages its wild,
what to do when it breaches the scheme.

Rain fingers the concrete.
Walls sweat. Moss thickens on the sills
where pigeons nest.

Doors swell in their frames.
The lift’s out again.
Kids chalk round the mould,
name them death zones.

Someone’s planted potatoes
in a washing-up bowl.
Roots force through the split base,
muscle for the ground below.

This place won’t stay as it’s built.
It shifts, it breaks, gets dragged
to the scrub, to the night calls,
to the unmanaged wild.

Claire Harnett-Mann is a Birmingham-based poet whose work appears in Tears in the Fence and elsewhere. A Nine Arches Press Primers 8 Highly Commended poet, her novella How to Bring Him Back (Fly on the Wall, 2021) was nominated for a Saboteur Award. She can be found on Instagram and Bluesky @clairehmwriter