128 Quotes by Alice Oswald

living in the slippery maybe the last green places are you listening

not many of us left not much movementin the blackening lanes among a few low treeslittle flocks of orchids in the ditches nobody cares

remembering better times whereas naming no namessome of us would rather not remember somethingsome of us have got enough bloody nightmares already

cold nights without streetlightswalking to the sea perhaps

so many names in this place not many of us leftliving on the last we can find can you hear this

no turning backeach drop is a snap decisiona suicide from the tower-block of heaven

no more than a flash of free-willuntil the clouds close their options and the wholemelancholy airsurrenders to pure fear andfalls

Topsoil is a place of digestion. It sucks and chews things into smaller pieces. When it's hungry, it turns grey and stony; when it's thirsty, it opens thousands of cracked lips. Subsoil is more skeletal: it doesn't digest.

Webs are made mostly of spaces. They break easily. They barely exist. They belong to the category of half-things: mist, smoke, shrouds, ghosts, membranes, retinas or rags; and they quickly fill up with un-things: old legs and wings and heads and hollow abdomens and body bags of wasps.