Home ( Victoria Park)
The park is home to mistle thrushes
Blackbirds, blue tits
Ring necked doves
The park is home to hooded crows
That stride and stab among the dark
Seaweed of the estuary that runs along the path
The park is home to bright green catkins
Dangling from naked branches, January,
And bramble leaves as tough as sharkskin
That never seem to shed at all
Although the trees are stark and bare
And ice is on the ground
The park is home to herons on the platform
of Bird Island, grey and weary
travellers waiting for a train
And egrets in their glamour, pale
dancers taking to the air
With serpent necks and legs of coal
The park is home to ducks - two kinds
Upending in their search for worms -
The mallard and the teal
And swans - one kind, magnificent
Meringues upon a mirror glass,
Preening out their feathers in the rain
The park is home to roses - pruned and mostly dormant now
In oblong beds, ranks of opposing armies
Lined up and ready for the war
I would not have laid them out like that
More circular, more curved perhaps,
But there we are
A burst of birdsong from the hedge
Of beech trees round the bowling green
Fierce, melodious and loud
A robin sticks his head from out between
The curled up leaves of golden brown
His scarlet breast is heaving now
With effort from his tiny lungs,
The bellows for this artistry,
And eyes me absent-mindedly
For I am walking in his world
Anita Greg 29/01/2021
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Woher kommt das Wasser der Erde?
All week there has been flooding in the park
with patches showing in between the ivy covered trees - bright light
- and clouds sail underneath the wide-webbed toes of swans
and trees are upside down ... their witchiness below our sodden feet.
This Earth was never born with water - we were nearer to the sun
when all the world was growing out of rubble, grit and dirt:
and where the water came from is a thing that is much discussed
with no clear answers - only disagreement on the Internet:
so let’s just say it mostly came from Outer Space
and maybe with the planet that became the moon
Or maybe not
Anita Greg 7/02/2021
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Faith (in Victoria Park)
February - in the park
It is freezing, wet and dark
In amid the ice and snow
Why it bothers I don’t know
All the bees are in their hives
Not a butterfly’s alive
But whin just doesn’t seem to care
and sees a sun that isn’t there
Anita Greg 09/02/2021
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The back wheel
The back wheel of a child’s blue scooter
It’s been in the pond, Victoria Park, so long:
and seen some changes since its rubber last touched ground.
But what would it care of covid, brexit,
feuds and politics and deals -
Things that have happened since it spun
on its ancient rusted axel
It’s in among the leaves and fishes
holding the memory of a child
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The green hand ( Victoria Park )
A great green hand is growing from Bird Island
In the middle of the lake - hand of a giantess:
Her velvet, lush with ivy pollen;
Her bent and bony fingers, swollen,
Are gloved and wrapped in treasure like an emperess
The storms may come - the cold winds blow
But there is shelter on Bird Island - where nobody can go
Anita Greg 12/02/2021
The leaning tree
I love the way this tree leans over water
Her branches stretch toward the airport road
The earth is loosened from around her roots
With flooding and the solid bank
Eroded by the tidal flow
The current swirls among the last year’s curling leaves
She has not shed. Her belly laced in twisting stems
A mass of veins and arteries
And worlds of moss in bright viridian
Evergreen on brown
Anita Greg 16/02/2021
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