My Dad Complains That The Hedges Are Overgrown

and the word bemuses me, implying as it does
the concept of excess in what can only be good.

Why do we crave these straight lines and
clean edges? The hedge itself

is a border, a defining.
A this is mine.
And this is yours.
A there and here.
An us and them.

Why not let it keep a little wildness?

Not for me this lopping and shaping,
this trimming and taming,
ruling and restricting-

Hear this- there are things
which cannot be governed, like
certain tendrilous tendencies
of a hedgerow heart
and those sacred things which live inside…

Father, I will not reach for the blade.
There is no such thing as too alive.

Gemma Blakeley is a teacher, mother, nature-lover and aspiring writer. She will have her first poetry published in Black Bough Poetry‘s Winter 2026 Anthology later this year. She lives in Shropshire with her husband, two children and the cat.