Poem about Royal Victoria Dock

 

AUGUST 2020

Harbour. Geese crowd on something almost submerged

and rhyme the pulley tackle close aloft.

Human swimmers enthuse the water, them

and cable cars more safe to view than mix.

The reach between Millennium abandoned

and Excel’s mothballed Nightingale, with bridges,

lifts, bridges engineered to swing, less swum.

Covid turns high summer to out of season.

The star circle is of another time.

The above was my contribution to 'A common place', a project organised jointly by the writers' group 26 Characters and Eames Fine Art.  Looking back to '26 prints', an earlier co-production (my contribution here), they invited writers and artists who'd participated in that to pair up, identify a place that mattered to both partners, and produce work in response to it.  My assigned project partner was the printmaker Anita Klein.  The common place we identified was the Royal Victoria Dock in London.  For me, it was a place much imagined in childhood, when I had an overwhelming interest in ships and fantasized about the docks over the river that was in walking distance from my grandparents' home in Lee Green.  For Anita, it was a recent discovery with the joys of open-air swimming.  Clare and I had a good day out there, and this poem came from that.