In Edinburgh’s old town there is a small garden called West Port Garden, or Geddes Garden. It was designed by Patrick as somewhere for the children of the area to play, and when it was opened in 1910 crowds flocked to see this small piece of greenery amid the slums of their city. In its day this garden had sandpits, swings, a small area for football and terraces for amateur gardeners or those who wanted to learn, to grow anything they liked. Patrick’s daughter, Norah, managed a team of women who ran the garden and these women particularly wanted to encourage children to get involved with gardening. Most of these children didn’t have gardens at home and this would have been their only experience of getting their hands in the soil and seeing the things they planted grow.

The spirit of this intention continues today. The West Port Garden is a quiet space by the roadside in Edinburgh and you’d walk past it if you didn’t know it was there. But step inside and it’s an area of tranquillity and calm. The garden is owned by Edinburgh council now and is run by volunteers who continue to encourage young people in particular to get involved with keeping the garden tidy and growing their own plants and vegetables. The garden hosts events, festivals, and has a herbalist on hand, and as the city evolves the garden opens its arms as it always has.

Take a seat in West Port Garden and it’s hard to believe you’re sitting in the centre of a busy capital city. This small oasis of peace and nature must be one of Patrick Geddes’ greatest achievements. His pioneering thinking and his passion for giving inner city children somewhere to learn the joy of gardening and a small space for quiet contemplation, should be applauded. As the city rumbles on, elderflower, tulips, the rowan tree, snowdrops in winter and blossom in spring, all bloom and sway in this pocket-sized city garden. Just over a hundred years after this garden was created it continues to serve the city in exactly the way Geddes intended.

Samantha Priestley is the author of the Folded Word short-fiction chapbooks Dreamers (2014) and Orange Balloon (2016). She’s a novelist, playwright, and essayist who spins words into gold from her home in Sheffield, UK.

To read the first page of Orange Balloon, see a sample illustration, or purchase direct, please visit our shop:
http://foldedword.bigcartel.com/product/orange-balloon

There once was a young woman named Bega. She lived in England in a time before us, when the land stretched onwards for miles like a slow breath and the hills rolled quietly and the sea whispered its lullabies. She lived with her father amid tumbling hills and rumbling streams, where mountains touched the sky and valleys sank low.

One day, Bega’s father came to her and told her she was to marry. Bega’s father had chosen a man for her, he was a nobleman in a neighbouring village and he would make a good match for Bega, her father said.

Bega wore a green dress, like a summer lawn, when she was to meet the man she was to marry. The man smiled at Bega and she tried to smile back, though the smile barely grew on her face at all. Bega did not want to disappoint her father, but she knew she could not love this man.

Bega’s father was stern, and he told his daughter love didn’t matter. She was to marry this man he had chosen for her and she was to forget her childish notions of love.

Bega felt her father’s words heavy on her, as heavy as the summer heat, and with a weighted heart, she knew what she had to do.

When the light fell and the owl sat and watched from the trees and bats shimmied around the branches like paper puppets, Bega dressed in bear fur. She collected together her most intimate belongings and she pulled the bear fur closer around her neck; quietly and slowly, she left the house.

Bega walked in the evening, the light slowly fading in a colour melt of the sky, darkness closing in. A castle rose high in the ink blue sky and its turrets appeared to touch the moon.

The door opened and a butler asked Bega to enter, and when Bega was admitted into the castle, the lady who lived there came to meet her.

The lady called to her husband to come and meet Bega and the lord did so with some hesitation. The lady told him Bega’s story and the lord of the castle was unsure what to make of it. He watched as his wife took the side of Bega and felt her sadness at having to leave her home, but the lord’s heart stood with Bega’s father.

The lord loved his wife. She was his shining star, his summer sun, his light in the darkness, the lord loved his wife so much he would do anything to make her happy.  The lord thought for a moment. He wished to see the smile brighten his wife’s face again like the light morning after a stormy night, so he came up with an idea that would mean he could make his wife happy and still send Bega back to her father.

The lord told Bega she could stay for the night in the big warm castle. Upon the sun rising, he said, Bega would be given her own land from his. He said she could live on this land she gained, she could settle and build her own home there, she could marry who she wanted and she could raise her family there, but…Bega would only receive the land that was covered in snowfall upon the morning. It was the middle of summer and the days were filled with heat and pure blue skies; the lord knew there was no chance of snow whatsoever, and he would keep his land and Bega would have to return home to her father.

Bega’s room at the castle that night was sumptuous and she was afforded every luxury the lord and lady enjoyed themselves, just as the lord had promised. Bega slept on goose feather pillows and a large bear skin covered her body as she dozed and dreamed. She dreamed of soft snow, snow that covered the land and everything in sight and brought calm, snow that silenced all it laid upon, thick and padded and deep like the most rest filled sleep.

In the morning Bega woke and stretched out a yawn.  Bega stood up and moved over to the window. Soft perfect white snow stretched over the land around the castle. Bega gazed over the scene in front of her, the snow covered around half of the land that the lord had promised she could choose from.

The lord said he couldn’t explain how snow had covered his land in summer, but he had made a promise and he was a man of his word. Bega would receive the land that was covered in snow that morning.

Bega built her life on the land she received and she called her home Summer Snow.

Samantha Priestley is the author of the Folded Word short-fiction chapbooks Dreamers (2014) and Orange Balloon (2016). She’s a novelist, playwright, and essayist who spins words into gold from her home in Sheffield, UK.

To read the first page of Orange Balloon, see a sample illustration, or purchase direct, please visit our shop:
http://foldedword.bigcartel.com/product/orange-balloon

©2019 by D.R. James
Previously published in The 3288 Review.

D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 35 years and lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. Poems and prose have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals (including FW), his latest of eight poetry collections are If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press) and Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box), and a microchapbook All Her Jazz is free and downloadable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. http://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

On the train to Rome, cigar smoke clouds my window;
people eat mortadella and a porter sells gum and mints.

I travel to a sacred place, discover a broken latch.
In prayers of my own device, I have questions.

We know that image, fluid and ever-changing.
For hysterics, pause — take a whiff of valerian.

This story spins in the night, this tale one
of a limping dog drinking fetid water. I’m unhinged by stars.

Seaweed bends to the pressure of water. In my
pea-green boat, I sail down to the purpling ocean.

A woman carries a milk jug, a flute plays under a
banyan tree. Returning, nothing will look the same.

©2019 by Jeanine Stevens
from Citadels (Folded Word, forthcoming 2019)

Jeanine Stevens is a poet and visual artist. Author of Limberlost and Inheritor (Future Cycle Press) and Sailing on Milkweed (Cherry Grove Collections), her poems have appeared widely in journals in the United States and United Kingdom. Her new collection of poems about her pilgrimage through the Italian countryside, Citadels, is available to pre-order here at Folded Word.

We still have night, which rarely falls fully into darkness any more: even the hills hold on to a faint orange-whiteness of city-glow. We have dusk, when we can move through forests and fields unseen by the walkers and talkers whose torches obscure more forest than they illuminate. We own the long summer dawns, best times in the year, when humans go to ground inside their rectangular hideouts, and even roadways lie quiet.

Across an ever-changing landscape of sound/scent/sight, under the roll of seasons, we learn and relearn our world. The heights and widths of hedgerow, the freshest grazing-grounds, the thickest cover and the safest routes between. We know when to disappear, where best to spend the slowness of the day in hiding from rushing sound and movement.

Dissolving into dappled patches of light and shade, we turn invisible, inaudible, invulnerable to danger. We are undergrowth ourselves, or bracken, stone and shadow. While autumn rules, my very antlers conform to the branching trees above me until I and all of mine become as forest as the distant generations before us and after.

©2019 by Fiona Jones

Fiona Jones lives near Dunfermline, Scotland — a well-populated area where you would not expect wild deer to live, but occasionally you glimpse them from afar.

You feel your heart lift as you gaze over the clear blue sky, the wide open ocean and the dry land. You feel your senses filled and your body at ease.

You arrive my boat, a long blue and white boat full of day trippers and island hoppers, and locals who’ve been shopping, their canvas bags bulging with silver plaited sandals that creak with their newness, nail polish in burgundy and deep green, and new kitchen pots that are smooth to touch and yet to feel oil swell on their surfaces. You travel across the sea with a gentle breeze in your hair and the sun on your head. You sail from the larger island of Rhodes that falls into the distance as you move over the water, its craggy harbour and the famous acropolis becoming memories or a dream. Rhodes that is dry hills and cool coves, historic streets that knights once walked and sandy buildings constructed in a different time. Busy Rhodes that dominates and stretches its hand back in time into its astonishing past and forward into its own glorious future. You cross the deep ocean water from the mother island, blue and green lifting with the surf, sea birds swooping and gliding on thermals.

The boat docks and the small Greek island of Symi greets you calmly and as if it has always known you. Symi rises and falls like it is breathing in the warm air, the land a mound in front of you as the mountain ascends to the sky. Pretty houses in yellow, pink, and white line the shore and the heavy sun touches the water and makes it dance. You feel your heart pulse and you know this place is a deep dream within you.

The mountain is dusty and dry and the goats wander, nibbling on shrubs and grass, and this is where the earth is cooler and the air is laden with dew. From where you stand now you can see the mountain reaching up toward the clear blue sky, its summit hazy in the sun.

You step forward again, and now you can see the small beach with the sea shining and moving beyond it, ripples of old waves reaching forward onto the sand and pebbles, and then withdrawing again, leaving the land to bask in the coolness of the water for a moment before the sun warms it once more.

Everyone is gone from the beach and this is now your land, your own space in time.

Samantha Priestley is the author of the Folded Word short-fiction chapbooks Dreamers (2014) and Orange Balloon (2016). She’s a novelist, playwright, and essayist who spins words into gold from her home in Sheffield, UK.

To read the first page of Orange Balloon, see a sample illustration, or purchase direct, please visit our shop:
http://foldedword.bigcartel.com/product/orange-balloon

Monday — pancakes a little burned,
gold leaves spend all their luck on scent

Tuesday — you, a splash of yellow – you, the sun
in the brook, our legs twined like branches

Wednesday — the dog lolls on the rock, ducks
murmur to the reeds, layers added and shrugged off

Thursday — the tall reeds cupping their hands,
the fire sputtering awake, quiet path to the bath house

Friday — the last hour of the day — the day with its heaving,
its hike, everything thrown together

Saturday — skin softly wind-washed, tented and warm,
my soul untaught, bashful and surprised

©2019 by Judith Chalmer

Recently, Judith Chalmer’s poems appeared in Birchsong anthology, journals Leaping Clear, Blaze Vox, Third Wednesday, Stone Canoe, Blue Unicorn, and Leveler. She is the author of one book of poems, Out of History’s Junk Jar (Time Being Books, 2005) and co-translator with Michiko Oishi for two books of haiku and tanka: Red Fish Alphabet (Tokyo, 2008) and Deepening Snow (Plowboy Press, 2012).

“Josh!” I hear Dad call even before he’s standing. “Up!” he says, though he might have called, Josh! then, Fire! meaning, tend to the coal-stove. Up means move, boy.

Downstairs he’s at the cooker rattling the gate, feeding in splits, free hand working a suspender. I bang into my boots a little loud but I don’t care.

“You’ll wake the dead,” he says searching the cupboard.

“Maybe you can join ‘em,” I say, up the sleeve of my mack.

“What’s that?”

— ears like a fox. “Said I’m going to feed the animals,” I say. Then throw my weight into the door, cracking the seal of frost. We call it morning because we’re up, but it’s not, it’s night. Outside, the cold is shocking, though I like it for the reason I can prove myself against it. Worse it gets the more I take. Love the metal taste of it, how my eyes water and tears freeze, how the cold is like something down inside my shirt, touching me. The moon is high in the west, and bright, lighting the barn like day, with clouds reflected in the window glass like a puddle frozen on the wall. Shadows are sharp and hard. I walk the pitch of the roof projected on the snow, then exit out the chimney like smoke.

photo and poem ©2019 by John Greenslade Skewes

John Greenslade Skewes is a writer and photographer who lives in the Seacoast Region of New Hampshire. He can be found most afternoons, camera in hand, walking the wetlands and forests with his spotted dog. Works have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Into the Void, Ariel Chart, and The Molotov Cocktail.

Introduction

Plastic. It’s everywhere we look. As you read this, you could simply turn your head and see five plastic items. Whether in a landfill or stuck in beachside brambles, these plastics will never decay into bio-available nutrients. Eventually, a fraction will be recycled, but the rest will break down over time into smaller fragments wherever they are discarded.

Read the article linked below for the fate of some of these microplastic particles. This article is the launch point of our exploration.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/713561484/microplastic-found-even-in-the-air-in-frances-pyrenees-mountains

Materials

• Note-taking supplies
• Digital camera, phone camera, or sketching supplies
• Stopwatch or stopwatch phone app
• Clothing appropriate for the terrain, weather, and wildlife (insects, snakes, etc.) where you plan to walk
• Optional: binoculars, hand lens or magnifying glass if you want to examine the plastic at length, rubber gloves & trash bag if you feel motivated to pick up the plastic you find and discard/recycle it in an appropriate place.

 
Methods (choose one)

For a quantitative exploration

1. Select a route you will enjoy walking for 20 minutes. This could be a route you walk everyday on your way to work, or a route you plan as a special excursion. Make whatever preparations are necessary for walking this route.
2. When you are ready to begin your walk, record the location, date, and time in your notes.
3. Start your stopwatch.
4. When you see the first piece of discarded plastic, read your stopwatch and record “elapsed time to first encounter” in your notes.
5. For this and every piece of discarded plastic you see on your 20 minute walk, record the number of items and approximate number of pieces each item is broken into in a table set up like the sample below. Sample 1 is for a yogurt cup that has been run over by a bus, with the estimated number of pieces it shattered into. Sample 2 is for a trio of intact plastic bags that blew into a nearby park.

For a qualitative exploration

1. Select a route you will enjoy walking. Duration of walk is up to you. This could be a route you walk everyday on your way to work, or a route you plan as a special excursion. Make whatever preparations are necessary for walking this route.
2. When you are ready to begin your walk, record the location, date, and time in your notes.
3. Start your stopwatch.
4. When you see the first piece of discarded plastic, read your stopwatch and record “elapsed time to first encounter” in your notes.
5. As you walk, take a mental note of the discarded plastic you see. When a particular plastic item grabs your attention and inspires more careful observation, stop and record what kind of item it is, how many pieces it has broken into, what kind of surface it is laying on or what plants/animals it is stuck in, whether it is faded or fresh, and any other details that will be important for the writing of your poem/prose. If safe to do so, consider picking up the piece(s) of plastic and looking for anyone that has begun to live in/on/under it.

 
Question

Once you’re in a safe place to sit and think, look over your notes and replay the walk in your mind. If you chose the quantitative exploration, write down the most compelling question you have about the volume of discarded plastic. If you chose the qualitative exploration, write down the most compelling question you have about the origin and/or fate of the plastic item you observed. For this exercise, “compelling” is entirely subjective – i.e. whatever compels you to write, be it funny or madding or just plain odd.

Results

Write a poem, flash fiction, or essay that attempts to answer your question. Feel free to bring in ideas and details from other experiences you’ve had, or even research that you were driven to do after the walk. Be sure to include sensory details that will take us where you were/are.

When you feel you have a finished piece that you’d like to submit, please email it to FoldedEditors [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line “Folded Field Notes: Microplastics submission”. Please include:

• Name (and pen name if you use one)
• Location of your walk
• “Elapsed time to first encounter”
• Your website/blog URL and Twitter/Instagram name(s) — if applicable
• Your country of residence

Embed your submission in the body of your email. MS Word doc or PDF attachments are acceptable for pieces that require specific spacing.

Analysis

Four pieces will be selected for editorial development and their authors invited to a private group on the Slack platform. Deadline to submit for editorial development is 31 May 2019. Other pieces may also be considered for our #WrittenWordWednesday column.

Conclusion

The final versions of the four pieces selected for development will be included in a print eco-lit anthology. Authors will receive a royalty of $10* + one contributor copy per piece included in the anthology, and will have the ability to purchase additional copies at a discount. Target year for publication: 2022.

*Please note: authors must have a PayPal account to receive cash royalty. An extra contributor copy may be substituted if a PayPal account is unavailable to you.

©2019 by JS Graustein and Heidi Marshall

Terns dart and swoop
Sandpipers race the tide
The sea breathes
Each wave exhales into the next.
Immersed in whispers of whitecaps
The clamor of the world recedes.

I want to go on with this nepenthe
Rinse my life of self
Go to the white sail
Plump on the horizon
Skimming to a far shore.

But the tide rises
Water deepens around me
Distant ones on the beach beckon me back.

©2019 by Eileen Curran-Kondrad

Eileen Curran-Kondrad is adjunct faculty in the English department of Plymouth State University. Her poem “Coyotes” was a 2018 Solstice Series Selection here at Folded Word. Her work has also been published in Red Eft Review and Centripetal.