Websites (Poetry)

Willows screen the urban sprawl and trail their slender threads
in water-mirrored images like greenly swaying webs
strung with casual symmetry across its dimpled skin,
undulating gently with a fluid discipline.

The site of small discoveries where wild ducks and swans
share the placid sanctuary of man-made urban ponds
with herons, dogs and humans like the hardy swimmer who
takes his bracing daily dip the frosty season through.

The smooth expanse of water draws a curious array
of visitors that fish and float their city lives away,
gliding on the surface or diving to the depths
with be-goggled health fanatics sporting icicle-clad chests.

While swans look on, disdainful, and dogs bark with delight,
the ducks patrol unruffled by, for them, a common sight
as hobbyists sail model boats and small boys trawl their nets
for newts or small aquatic things, a-squirming quick and wet.

The heron keeps his distance, browsing through thick clumps of weed,
in the filtered, grainy sunlight takes his early morning feed,
and the wary coots and moorhens cruise the shallows with their chicks -
dark feathery flotillas bobbing through the melting mists

where an artificial landscape with its water, grass and trees
(designed for recreation) harbours country refugees
in modern symbiosis with the townies outdoor needs -
the joggers with their poodles and the office break stampedes.

Incongruous, the company around the city pond
and peculiarly British, this quaint phenomenon -
the revival of an instinct, unbidden and untold,
that lures them to this echo of the long-lost watering-hole.