Down by Asda carpark,
Over the roundabout,
Between the new housing estate,
And the dual carriageway,
On the last patch of green space
Behind the billboards advertising
Prime building land with planning permission in place.
Where the dog-walkers circle parade
While their charges defecate,
The trees hang heavy with ripening bags of shit.
Down by the gully
That runs through the site,
There's a movement in the long grass.
A badger, up late,
Rolls like an excited puppy.
Overcast grey dawn,
Low clouds and high tide
Meet before the open water
At the end of the bay.
No detail, no depth,
No sense of distance, space or time.
The scent of wet rocks.
The tide is high but turning and still.
The surface of the water smooth as chrome.
An odd bird bobbing low in the water
Among the regular Oystercatchers,
Geese and Gulls,
Has a hat on.
Same scene two days later,
Two Swans emerge from the mist.
The stuff of Arthurian legend.
Sparrowhawks (plural),
Plucking plumage in Waitrose carpark.
Scattered pigeon outside the front door.
Two Red Kites, low over the Big Yellow Storage,
Between the building college and the Holiday Inn.
Buzzard on the ground in the carpark at Selco,
Spooked, takes breakfast off into the shadows
Of the treeline to eat in peace
Behind the builder's knackered van.
Cormorants at high tide,
Skimming the creek at Portchester,
Doing that wing thing on the upturned carcasses of
Dead boats drowned in the mud.
Is it a Cormorant? Is it a Shag?
Purple Plover on the seafront at Southsea
On the concrete foreshore by the Castle.
Kessies over The George Inn
At the top of Portsdown hill,
Hounded by Crows.
Magpies roost with the Woodies at the back of
The car door mirror factory.
A Rook bathing in the dew on the grass.
Today, I heard an Egret call.
It's not right for such an elegant bird
To sound like a Duck being choked.
Little Egrets, bloody Egrets everywhere!
Non! Je n'Egret rien!
Uncountable Foxes, tamed by their proximity to
Human detritus. Lulled into a sense of
Tenuous security, cocky but cautious.
In the middle of Langstone harbour,
Slobbing about sunbathing on the sandbanks,
Grey Seals nobody sees without a telescope.
And I'm chatting on the phone at the side of the
Square Tower, at the entrance to Portsmouth harbour,
Another Grey Seal casually bobs along in the grey-green surf below,
Watching me watching.
And, Grey Seal in the bay at Portchester Castle,
Just a few yards off the sea wall at Southampton Road.
Tides running out, but the Seal has a school of fish
Herded into the shallows.
Surfaces now and then to slap one silly on the water
Before chewing on it like a dog with a bone.
Off the motorway embankment, under the trees,
On the gravel track by the fishing lake,
A scattering of wild Rabbits rummaging in the undergrowth.
A couple of Kestrels quarter the lake side.
Magpies, Moorhen, Coots and a flotilla of
Canada Geese populate the fringes of the reed beds.
Drift a little into open water.
A shocked Green Woodpecker yells startled green abuse,
Racing off to find another quiet spot to drum up lunch.
And a pair of Jays in pink and vivid blue
Add some spicy colour.
Down by Mountbatten, at Tipner Lake,
Occasional Godwits and Redshank turn up between
Hordes of Egrets. Oystercatchers, Gulls, and
Great Grey Heron.
A pair of random Curlew stop by one evening.
Still there next morning, and a couple of days later
At Portchester bay.
One Friday in mid-November,
Eight Cormorants, a Black Backed Gull and a Grey Heron
Share the raft at Tipner.
Along the receding tide-line,
Tucked away among the Brent Geese,
A handful of Shelduck splap about in the mud,
Exotic and filthy.
Plucked a bewildered and bedraggled
Red Partridge from the sea at high tide
At Portchester bay.
She was missing a dog-sized mouthful of feathers
From her back. No skin broken, she was shocked but alive.
We hid her away to recover.
In the small brown bird ranks,
Dunnocks simply outnumber Sparrows,
Now rare in our gardens and dwindling to extinction
While their niche is filled by,
Well, other small brown birds.
A swarm of Wagtails
Flitter, picking tidbits in the lurid algae-green
Pebbles at the shoreline as the tide runs away.
Never more than a foot away from the other,
A pair suddenly tear away into an aerial display
Of rollercoaster swoops and dime-turns,
Skater eights and vertical rocket launches
That put the Swifts to shame.
Blue Tits and Goldcrests bring the glitter,
Robins bully and berate
Blackbirds busy at the break of dawn.
Starlings shimmer in everything they do.
Their whole existence is a world of shimmering,
Song, flight, plumage and antics.
Parakeets, wild on Farlington marshes.
All Robin Hood green with radishes for noses.
Still on Farlington marshes, a Barn Owl
Floats across a backdrop of cattle in hazy sunlight
And vanishes in a puff of Hawthorn.
___________________________________________
I've been commuting to work for many years. I've had many conversations in that time about the things that I've seen and encountered en route, through urban and rural landscapes - largely of the "What do you even look at?"
So this is a poem about my failed attempts to spot wildlife in the kinds of 'pure', natural habitats you see on 'Spring/Autumnwatch' and elsewhere on the telly. It started off being about wildlife without the rose tinted long lenses, in built-up, urban, industrial landscapes, in closer proximity with us than we often realise, often so close that the great majority of us barely register it. Over time, I think it has changed somewhat. Evolved, you might say.
This piece is by no means 'finished'. It grows each time I see something extraordinary or beautiful on the commute from home to work each day. I cycle everywhere, though I'm not one of those 'Lycra Princesses' with all the gear, pretending I'm in the Tour de France everyday. I'm a cruiser, a meanderer. I'm interested in the texture of the journey. I have no desire to reduce it to a snap, nor to isolate myself from the experience plugged in to any artificial distraction. I want to exist in and experience the living world, not the dead world of the digitally dull, virtually non-existent. Can't touch it, can't feel it, don't know if it's real or fake. In the words of Robin Williams/Adrian Cronauer in 'Good Morning Vietnam', "What's the weather like today? You got a window, open it!" Well, now it's me saying, "You got eyeballs and a mind! Open 'em!"
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