Loam
Leen Raats
We are made up of layers.
Like this landscape that
reads like an old book.
Crooked apple trees with names
reminding me of a song
that hasn’t echoed
over these hills for a long time.
Rotting fruit in moist grass
where once ladders and grandfathers
climbed gnarled trunks.
Eroded roads
like ingrained sorrow.
We seek stray pebbles
rounded by warm waves
before the dawn of mankind
finding chalk carcasses of creatures
that no longer exist.
An imprint is all that remains.
Leen Raats (born in 1984) lives in Belgium. She runs a copywriting business, writing about nature, landscapes, and history. She self-published books in Dutch and won several writing contests in Belgium and the Netherlands. Her English publications include Pleiades, 34 Orchard, Crannóg, and Anthra Zine. Find out more at www.leenraats.com/writer
