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After The Fallow
By: Justin Coombes
About The Poem
In this poem, I brought together three inspirations: the thought of all our soon to be re-tapped potential as we emerge from lockdown, Epping Forest and its neighbouring areas of farmland (the soil cultivated for centuries), and William Morris’s dictum, “Fellowship is Life”, which appears on Waltham Forest’s coat of arms.
The Poem
Almost together, looking ahead,
let us imagine very old maps:
each one plotted with green-gold squares,
and let us picture, perhaps,
each of us now a fallow field,
and our rich, idle soils sleeps and slips,
in-between seasons, awaiting seeds:
the arrival of crops’ fellowship!
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