I met Tamsin at a creative nature writing workshop I led at the Creekside Discovery Centre in South East London a couple of weeks ago. Following the workshop celebrating urban nature she sent me these lovely pieces of writing about Deptford Creek, a remarkable place treasured by Tamsin and her family. Enjoy!
(The picture is from a display of some of things which have been found in the creek)
A Halcyon Dream/Ode to my local Creek
Culverted. Constricted. Squeezed. Urban aquatic vasculature. Within its bowels languish skeletal remains of the Golden Hinde and Caesar's tales are whispered. Brackish fingers unfurl, infiltrate the tributary, creeping along her undulating, gravelly bed with the burgeoning surge of the flood current. Here they tentatively mix with sweet water, nurturing a wriggling soup of elvers upon tidal transport.
Glutinous swathes of viscous mud, kissed with vibrant, viridescent smatterings of algae, cradle the pregnant channel. Patterns, smudges, webbed and clawed footprints reveal secrets of waterfowl and terrestrial inhabitants.
Amongst the dabbling ducks, passerine philharmonic and gull cacophony, an exotic flash of iridescence demands immediate attention. My pupils dilate, skin on pinprick. There! Darting along the sea wall, a halcyon dream, an azure brushstroke, an aquamarine light trail… juxtaposed against pockets of ochre, starkly visible as one splash of vivaciousness within the remnants of a bygone industrial era.
Masonry Phytes
Parabolas of woody shoots stretch out overhead, creating an unlikely canopy of silvery, green solar panels. Soft rays of vernal sunshine caress photosynthetic surfaces, spilling through stems to bare tarmac below.
Perpendicular to the pavement, a mature railway arch rises, a vertical growth medium for vegetation and artful expression. Within shaded crevices, fibonacci curved fern fronds cautiously reach, then capitulate on contact with aerosol pigments depicting thought provoking, political propaganda. Mutualistic species flourish; algae and fungi coalesce as chewing gum splotches of lichen life. And everywhere sedulously sprout the omnipresent buddleja, from ever elongating splits in aging masonry; biological weathering dynamism. Their fragrant, conical, violet hued blossoms attracting a lepidopterist's dream of diversity. A welcome drinking haunt to uncoil bespoke, mobile straws and quench sugary thirst, till satiation is thus achieved.
The Brookmill Wader
Secreting yourself amongst the arboreal shadows,
Hunched back, shrouded in steel blue-grey cloak, elongated dorsal plumes bristle outwards, breaking up your silhouette.
Neck stretched searching.
Your demeanour reminds me of a slightly disgruntled, disinterested septuagenarian… to whom the monotony of life is irksome.
Yet when you stir, the efficacy of your predatory instincts is hard to ignore.
Creeping carefully, surreptitiously, but with purpose,
Not a ripple do your wading legs make,
Not a whisper can be heard as you gingerly glide across the aquatic mirror that belies your hunting ground.
Stopped now, you pause your pursuit.
I catch my breathe and watch you….
Still.
Stealthy.
Statuesque.
Sigmoid cervical retraction.
Patiently you wait.
Dagger ready, black pupils fixated within yellow orbs.
You peer into the gloom.
Anticipation is tangible.
Waiting…..waiting….
Adrenaline cascades through my capillaries; I …. exhale ….. slowly.
Then! Snake-like neck lunges forward; uncoiled!
Lightening innervation creates a cataclysm of movement.
Biological atlatl.
Blink and you'd miss it,
Master of mathematics, calculations manifested in a perfect strike.
Bill full of amphibious prey stunned with splayed webbed toes, rigid legs, warty skin glistening, golden irises bulging,
Soon to run crimson.
Trolley-wrecks of the Creek
You think we come here to die.
Discarded, unloved, heaps of metal.
Abandoned.
Left in a ruinous state to sink deeper by the day,
Into the sludge and silt brought by the Ravensbourne and by the North Sea's surging tides…
Forsaken, we are attacked from all sides!
Some pass and shake their heads, mutter, grumble, almost incomprehensibly,
"What a mess" and "What a shame."
They implore, "Can't someone just clean up that eyesore?"
Perplexed, they lament that we are breeding there.
We do seem to multiply, three or more deep we appear as slipper limpets as the low tide exposes our tangled, rusting bodies.
"What about nature?" they cry incredulously. "What can be done?"
Humanity please,
Re-evaluate, re-assess and re-discover what your senses are feeding your grey matter.
Pause. Observe.
Refrain from judging us by your misguided beliefs and aesthetic perceptions.
For we are a perch for a fisherman of royal status,
From which he may dive for his delectable if slightly, slippery supper.
We are idyllic havens for fry who hide amongst our metallic polygons,
Concealed from those who would choose to predate upon them.
Minute Mary Celestes. Trolley-wrecks of the Creek!
We enable swirling eddies of minuscule yet multitudinous proportions.
We animate layering of silt upon the Creek's bed,
Encouraging effervescence, turbulence, oxygenation.
Expediting the diversity of aquatic life,
We gently cultivate the surrounding ecology.
Existing as an oxymoron; sacrosanct to some, yet trash to others.
Evolving into amphibious apparatus,
Epitomising life after death,
Within the brackish underbelly of the Creek we dwell.
Take a moment to realign how you perceive us.
Unearth novel beauty within familiar spaces.
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