Thinning
fronds of canal-
side trees
like uneven
strands of white hair
on an old woman’s head.
Tendrils
like veins in leaves
tiny blood vessels
spreading away from trees
bared by winter
Fatness of pigeons, fullness
of Ugg boots.
Texture of tree bark
posters fading on garbage cans
misshapen saddle-bags on the backs of bikes,
asymmetrical.
Icy puddles on the road, treacherous,
as sudden as XTC or a
blow to the head
dips and valleys
unusual surface of Clingendael roads, like
the hide of some giant leviathan
on whose back I ride.
Cycling through Clingendael
reminds me of Lindsey Stirling videos,
There is one of her playing violin
and dancing at some sort of dumpsite
or an abandoned building at the foot of some hills.
The buildings are derelict
Grafitti in big blue spiky letters, leaves and vines
mixture of the delicate
and rough, of smooth and grit…
I’ve always liked opposites and contrasts,
Juxtapositions
and their in-betweens
rasp and quaver
in a crows croak
cobalt blue of street signs, straight and true but
rounded at the edges
Loud arguments of water birds
A trunk so covered in light green moss
that it looks like it spent all eternity on its side.
Rank vegetal decomposition
in the back of a dumptruck.
Bike leaning on a lamp-post, an
Albert Heijn bag as a seat cover.
Old dirty canvas draped
over rusting corrugated metal fencing.
A duck cuts diagonally across canal scum
like a windscreen wiper.
I pass a swan’s nest (and then
the “verboden voor honden” signs
begin to make sense)
They’re both there. One on the nest,
one nearby, shifting muddy leaves
with its large beak.
Two crows peck
near the sleeping swan. Its neck
thick as a rope
used to tie ships to a quay. Sinuous
as a mating snake.
There’s been a bicycle parked, locked, by a tree in the woods
I wonder who it belongs to,
Whether it belongs to anyone at all,
Pale light on water, like beaten metal
Water-side reeds, dead leaves gone wheat-beige
There is a gentle, fragile magic to these woody lanes
That you only notice when your mind is quiet
Brick roads and gentle arched bridges
Spreading out in a lazy patchwork,
Know only to water birds
and dogs,
a pulse of life so slow
you won’t hear it
unless you wait for it or
of there is static on the line.
The web of tree shadows
is sometimes the only reminder
of the pale
imperceptible light
of early spring.
Sharp spikes and small curved windows
of clock towers,
marred sometimes by the ugly squatness
of new buildings (themselves softened
by the presence of toddlers
on supermarket trolleys being wheeled to cars)
(and by the curves of brick side-walks
made gentle, deformed,
by weather and age
and by the irregularities in the cement paving on bike paths)
all in a rhythm so imperceptible
that you must slow down
breath slow
to feel.
Sometimes I wish I had a broader lens
So I could take in more of this tapestry
of embroidered light
that glides by.
Fly into nooks that dip
between hillocks and crannies in canopies
like a video camera strapped to a toy plane.
Capture liquid notes of bird sound,
note by note,
in intricate, exquisite detail like
etchings in jewellery or the folds of a robe in an old painting.
A swan cuts the set-gel surface
of the Haagse-bosjes pond
like a knife-tip through the pimpled skin of sago pudding,
it docks by the pond-side, white, minature
carnival float.
Trees flowering
in powdery bursts of white and pink,
Shock of yellow leaf.
I wish I could set this scenery to music,
it would be such a potpourri, a tapestry of sound
so detailed, so rich, so sensory I overload
with the grass and the ducks and the trees and the benches and the mailman in a red
jacket, and cars parked in a line I wonder
what sound would represent the car
quick smooth vowel notes like
sea-turtle eggs being laid
slippery globular slide and plop
as they pass
cyclists could be a sibilant whizz
like the sonar signature of a small
metallic creature
in the sea.
Feathers would be barely audible
and a nesting swan
would be a long, low, wind-tone.
latent menace, tenderness.
Rapid murmur of smooth grass passing
flowerbeds tinkling like a field of tiny wind-chimes
weeds anarchic, bushy broken sine-curves
parked scooters, swift, small whooshes of air-stream.
Lithe women in jeans, slow
rhythmic swaying beats
on broad-hipped low-
voiced drums.
Pockmarked paving, sunken gratings, tiny
puffs and coughs.
Lorries and trucks, trundling elephant-sounds
Trees, rustling so complex
you couldn’t write them down.
Intersections like a herd of wildebeest
crossing a river in high season,
brakes likes squeals
of calves,
and beasts caught
in the jaws of crocs.
This morning,
passing a church disgorging
its faithful, I saw an old lady
She was holding a sprig of some leaves,
spare, like pine.
Legs that no longer taper, stockings
weaving, staggering walk,
Like Maggie Thatcher
in The Iron Lady
talking to herself,
to the dead in her head
grip on the moving mosaic of
time and place,
loosening.
Watching her made me want, desperately
to peg everything
onto paper
While my mind
still has a gecko-foot-
-grasp
