Balconies (Sugar 3)

I’ll let you into a secret, just so long as you don’t tell anyone. It’s about the balconies. If you laugh I won’t say and you’ll never know. It’s your call.

It’s strange to me how people don’t know this already, but then I guess most people don’t realise about magic.

You’ve got to pick a colour. Then you’ve got to find a flat with that colour and get onto the balcony. It’s easier than you’d think, but I couldn’t tell you how.

Red is for love.

Blue is for dreams.

Green is for travel.

Orange is for family.

I forgot to say, you’ve got to find a balcony where you can see the river, and that wooden thing with the twirly top. It won’t work otherwise.

And then it’s simple. You reach down both hands to touch the colour. You look at the spinning top and at the water, and you make your wish. Don’t expect a thunderbolt. Don’t expect something to happen straight away. Wishing’s a delicate business, my mum told me that. You’ve got to be patient. You’ve got to keep your heart and your eyes wide open. You’ve got to be prepared to wait.

A poem by volunteers at the ecology park

Greenwich Peninsula

I am reed warblers building invisible nests,
I am skylarks singing behind Sainsbury's,
I am the ecology park, kids loving to learn,
I am your smile as you cut back the willow.

I am the whispering of wind through the reeds,
I am the crash of barges and the honk of geese,
I am a bubble of calm on a walk through the park,
I am the river, the beginning and end of it all.

I am floodlit moonscape, alien landscape,
I am burning conveyor belts and rafts of rotten eggs,
I am your escape at the end of a miserable day,
I am old, I am new, I am always changing.

by volunteers at the ecology park, 08.10.08

2nd drop-in workshop, Wednesday 8th October

Please join us for the 2nd drop-in workshop on Wednesday 8th October, cottage number 82, River Way. 6.30-8.00pm

Future Peninsula

I’m looking for a bus stop. I’m guessing there’s one in 112 plant pots’ time. 112 square pots all the same, lined up like guards. No weeds. Ready to face the invisible army. Ten stone slabs to every marked pavement square. Ten pavement squares to every one minute of looking. No weeds. And how many more pavement squares to the bus-stop? To infinity? Hmmm, things to face in the war for the bus-stop … blinding light off faceless glass building; cloned surroundings, losing the will to live. Where am I?

Gera, 01/10/2008

Peninsula

In my head there’s a finger of land and it’s pointing outwards in the direction of water. It could be an admonition, a telling off, but it’s not so hard as that. Not stone. Not impenetrable. No, it’s more of a friendly pointing to something other, something beyond, something I don’t quite see yet.

I may not see, but I do hear. I hear the river just beyond the finger’s edge. It’s so near you could argue that it’s inside of me – a practised beat, a pulse of life that runs around and through and over, racing round the corner of my vision.

So, I’m inside this circle of land and sea: an equal part of the thrum of life; this bright living thing we all pay into.

Gera, 01/10/2008

the more it changes

Docklands the buildings heave and crowd
look down on
the gentler weathered shapes
across the water
well settled on their solid royal bases,
the dome a curve away
shifts slightly as it sinks
its nails into the moving sand
reminds us boats were tethered to this land

the Thames so silent now,
where once a world of ferrymen and sailors
peppered the sea breeze
with wild exotic curses
and scavengers scoured mudflats in their wake,
communication highway of its day
before the houses losing interest
turned imperceptibly
the other way

strange how this island
nearly but not quite
seems semi-permanent
as if in waiting for the crust to crack
the gas to flow
the Thames to take it back


Marina Collins 01/10/08