Fresh grass
bruised by bare feet
smells sweetly in the sun,
the freckles of flowers
scattered amongst the blades
as spikes of seed heads
swathe the breeze.
This pasture, left fallow,
bears its own value,
one not to be judged by its yield.
“There seems to be a lot of judgement towards people, women especially, who choose not to have children – that their lives are somehow worthless without them. A life well lived should not be judged by its output but by its contents. I’m very fortunate to have had (and am still having) a full and vibrant life without the need for offspring. Above all, I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the choice, one which many women do not get.”
With an MA in Fine Art, Helen Finney spent her adult life working as a fine artist in South Wales. Having been unexpectedly stuck in Thailand during the pandemic, she turned to her second love – writing. Still there several years on, her work has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Poetry Wales, Dreich Mag, Morecambe Poetry Festival Anthology I & II, Gyroscope Review and elsewhere. Her fourth collection was released last summer and a collection entitled ‘Positively Childless’ should be available later this year.