Breather
Screen break, tea break, sketchwalk, Lea.
I stretch my view –
to big skies and tangles
of industry, tide and nature
in this workaday corner of East London.
Unsung yet full of song,
soaring above the city clatter
a soundscape
all twinkly sand martins,
squabbling gulls,
shouty crows,
and down in the rustle of the reed beds,
the click of coots.
At low tide, I breathe sea tang
and I am home in Kent’s creeks and marshes.
Sometimes I play,
follow a diving cormorant,
guess where it will surface (I’m always wrong).
I stretch my view –
until nature brings me wonder.