In answer to the question: “Why do you like leaves?”

Because my favourite thing about the garden when I was growing up was the fruit trees. Nothing flashy about them, despite the stature suggested by the adjective ‘giant’ before their names: Giant Apple, Giant Pear. One, at the bottom of the garden, split its trunk into two wide boughs forming a seat wide enough for two small legs, folded underneath the body and providing a platform for any reading book. I’d tug absent-mindedly at the leaves hanging around me as I turned the pages.

Because later, when the legs were a little longer and they could no longer curl into the hollow of those branches I collected different leaves. Flowers were the pretty ones, the noticed, those with more attention than they needed, who turned themselves to the light until their edges were brown and crinkled. Leaves were the underdogs, never chosen, overlooked. And I sat with the leaves that filled the pages of the library’s books and those who sat in class with me.

Because later still, when the flowers shook off their leaves, I took them up, a lover’s hand-me-downs, sister’s shred clippings. I seemed to see the windings of their veins in mine until colours changed and faded.

Because in turn, each turn, I became the leaves, spurned for blossom from that same tree and others, radiant, facing the sun.

Because even when the leaves seem to crisp and become more fragile than a petal, those blooms are already a faded memory. Because when leaves descend gracefully down, are crushed underfoot, they bring new life to the soil while some, the strongest, are always green.

Because those who are worth the world rarely get it.

Because they’re still the lucky ones; if they can see the gentle beauty in the lines of a leaf, they’ll still see good around them.

For my Year 12s

Just in case any of you have decided to wander back over here, having taken your own journeys, either with trepidation or true cyber explorers' zeal, into the world of blogging, or perhaps, before you have embarked ... I felt I should add something to the blog so that the date of the most recent post doesn't look quite so terrible. I have to confess, though, that I am cheating somewhat - the restrictions imposed upon me by the pile of marking next to my chair prevent me from writing something new tonight but I promise to do so soon - couldn't leave you to venture into this world alone without a guide, could I? Just call me Tenzing.

So here's a poem written a couple of years ago for an Australian teacher who was working at EWS and was really struggling to see anything even remotely positive about English winter mornings:

As the lights go down on a winter’s morning,
A street slides into electric darkness.
Creeping behind, a hazy light pushes sluggish feet to work.

A setting sun still more distant than the setter,
padding behind loyal master,
his rich tones brazenly teasing the fading
colours of the dry leaves melting in the frost.

Mrs Magpie hammers home her drilling chant,
her mate turning away towards the approaching foggy brightness.

Glitter on the pavements and walls, lifting onto skirts and coats;
Giggling girls opening Christmas cards on the way to school.

The push up the hill – puddles and leaves burnished with bronze droplets.
Final step to the brow of the hill,
blanketed by the warmth of the sunset, flooding the sky at last

Just another grey and miserable English winter morn.