Poetry at Wandle Park

Poetry Of Wandle Park

IN WANDLE PARK

The Wandle meanders silkily

between its new green banks,

chattering to itself over shingle

like a child making discoveries:

light and air, after long years in darkness.

The sky, like a make-up artist,

paints it with many and changing colours;

a dancing shine rides on its ripples as confidently

as the youngsters skateboard in the park.

It doesn’t mind children throwing stones into it.

Plastic bottles and wrappers

are educational toys it can play with

and learn about the world.

It doesn’t resent its former imprisonment,

it’s just happy being free and able to do what it has always done,

which is carrying on in its own sweet way,

faithfully going home to the Thames and to the sea.

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REVIVAL

But here I am

More alive than ever.

And there is that sharp bright scent of the marigolds.

The tiny shrewd face of the robin watches me from the railings.

He is watching me.

For here I am,

folding my hands through the sunlight,

rinsing my hands through the summer dust,

hot and golden,

like sifting flour.

That feeling, that escape:

running away under a blue sky

Can’t stop smiling.

That turning left, not right.

Passing the doctor’s but not going in.

Getting off the bus but not going to work.

Not today, in the golden syrup of this sunlight.

Which I am plunging my hands through.

Which I am washing my hands in.

For here I am.

More alive than ever.

©Sue Lewis (2013)

WANDLE PARK HAIKU

(i)

Ice slides down the roof

Of the Replica Bandstand

But the thaw is real

(ii)

The dog pulls her lead

When squirrels dance in the park

Tasting their capture

iii)

The bandstand revived

All people had to do was

Learn how to use it

(iv)

The water would run

Clean through the city if it

Were not for humans

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AFTERNOON IN THE PARK

October breathes heavily;

Leaves cascade on the exhale

Tossing and turbulent.

Rectangles of silk, red and blue,

Pirouette, prance and dance;

Bound to the earth by nylon thread.

Two youngsters presumptuously dare

To harness the wind's might;

For their own pleasure,

Gusting and swirling.

Pulling the teenager

straining to hold

Two insignificant pieces of cloth.

Black and white mongrel barks.

His owner amused, watches the wind

Playing the youths, run and dance.

Barking, barking, wanting to chase His ball.

No interest in the kite,

Wants to play doggy games.

The army of leaves on manoeuvres

Scurry across the weathered grass.

Some stopped by man and boys

Drop, pause - re-energised,

Swiftly follow their comrades

Impelled by the irresistible.

The youths arms' are aching;

Flying a kite should be easy.

It wasn't like this on the telly!

©Jean Wearn Wallace. (2013)

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The River

seven months on

and each day since rising through those gates

I watch the struggle from a vomiting Croydon

dumping on you. in you, an old woman, you

from an undisturbed shut-away culvert grave

lying long in the stinking shame

of secrets you carried into your incarceration

or retirement, the expectation is no different

to move the waste once more

in your flow to somewhere else

to rid Croydon of pollution

unseen

the red diesel is a mystery

for the red tape of officials

the poison flowing secretly

is a town emptying its veins

choking you as a blame

still you dance like the queen of calypso

in a sensual winding through the Park

bringing to you people by tram-loads

from Central Parade in New Addington

thru to the tennis greens of Wimbledon

and sometimes the careless visitor

shows little love or thought for you

a young mother leaves used nappies

the drinker blue and black plastic bags

beer cans, vodka bottles, the empties

roll in drunkenly through wildflowers

idle-thinking thrown on the wind mix with chicken bones:

leftover fast-food in wrappers

reckless boys in the night-time for a laugh or for a dare

push in shopping trolleys, throw lifebelts in without care

for the river song

still your voice is a tingling laughing

where Jack jumps in with his reflection

where imagination stoops to listen to an old woman

wearing a dress of long shimmering blue dragonflies

still your voice is a flowing laughing

where squadrons of Canada geese wake the morning

to gaze into the beauty and passion

where tiddlers will soon come.

©irma u-h (September 2013)

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RIVER WANDLE

Percolated through North Downs chalk

It rises beneath a Croydon Pub

No longer able to create the

Marsh around the Bishop’s palace;

It’s now confined to concrete pipe,

And culvert until it emerges

In Wandle Park’s ponds.

Also fed from Carshalton ponds

Merging to create the Wandle

No longer does it irrigate

The lavender fields of Beddington,

It accepts the clear water run-off

From Beddington Sewage works

Where once ninety Victorian mills

Vied along its 11 mile course,

Polluting and poisoning the waters;

Now it is a haven for wildlife; a green

Lung in the heart of South London.

One lasting legacy, it’s responsible for

Creating the unique taste of Youngs

Award winning Ram Brewery Beers

Before joining the Thames.

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SONG FOR WANDLE PARK, CROYDON

Let's hear it for the flowers and the bees

The birds and the trees

The grass that's underneath

And the heather on the heath

Let's hear it for the flies and the worms

For the seagulls and the terns

The slugs and the snails

And all their glassy trails

Let's hear it for the foxes ghosting by

And the swallows flying high

For the lichen on the urn

And the thistle and the fern

Let's hear it for the toads and the frogs

And the newts down by the logs,

The bushes in their leaf

And all the life beneath

Let's hear it for the moles in their mound

And the rabbits underground

For the badgers in their sets

The mice, the voles, the ferrets

Let's hear it, even for the cabbage white

And the moths that fly at night

The damsels and the dragon flies

And the bats up in the skies

Let's hear it for the pippet, lark and owl

And all the fish and fowl

For the milfoil. sedge and frond

And the lilies in the pond

Can we hear it for every living thing,

That can squeak or squeal or sing?

For the stone, the sand , the clay

The frosts at night and the sun at day

This is not the full list, perhaps might never be,

Though the thought that it could is frightening to me,

So let's praise all the footpaths, each park and every stream

Let the willows go on weeping, let's save this urban dream

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WALKING MY GENERATION TRAIL IN WANDLE PARK

In the park today I stepped into my past

rolling back the cover of sixty-five years

watch me, a small boy remembering days

out with mum, dad and my granddad

and memory run along the river's edge

in the sudden unkind feel to the wind

blowing boats on the lake to panic,

water fowl mind only the mischief of boys skylarking

I remember Sundays on the bowling green

granddad crisp in his whites, he wore proud

his scorings were precise, the envy of Croydon

a vista of the Pavilion was a perfection in green

I skimmed stones on the river

sometimes too close I fall in

to walk home dripping and cold

like water from the drinking fountain

Today in-between the old trees and blue skies

parakeets wheel and screech in green circles,

noisy newcomers are reflecting the changes

in the sixty-five years I did not come

In the park today I stepped into my past

and walked across three generations

fathers and sons walking in Wandle Park

I am looking back long, an old man now.

WANDLE PARK BETWEEN DUSK AND DAWN

(remembering John Fisher)

The young fox on the edge of that bush

watch dogs on the lead stroll as evening is closing

he stretches out horizontally flush with the ground

so eyes across the distance only imagine him there

The rustling leaves in the autumn night

warn of a hedgehog ploughing the undergrowth

harvesting earthworms and luck with him siding

blinds the eye of the hunter silently circling

A dancing head is scanning the nightscape

she, waiting in the silence of the willow weeping

this lady of the night holding the vole in her eye

knows tonight he's leaving his river-home, forever

Out of the deep part of night comes the ritual calling

from spritely dog-foxes on a park-wall promenading

I hear only cruel sounds that rush me from my sleep

and from the window watch legs swinging like fever

in a big calypso competition night

or there to witness the bacchanal

of a community come to settle scores

to scatter when sirens start to sound

Into the night a lone blackbird sing late

now multi-tones of dawn are breaking

over a coarse quarrelsome chattering

when the magpies sing. It is morning

and the restless barking on the wind

wakes a man come to say goodbye

his friend is dying and he is leaving

it is four in the morning and it is time.

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