BLACKCAP
1st May 1998

Car park shrubs, a spirit warbles
in the glistening rain of new burst leaf.
Sweet wet sip of bubbling song.

Everything flows. When the bed of the river Kennet at Reading Gas Works was dug up during the summer of 1880 they found bones of beaver, boar and wolf. In February 1993 I was amazed to see a male Blackcap in the trees by Blake’s Lock. A bird that I had always only known as a summer visitor to Britain in the deep mid-winter seemed concrete evidence of Global Warming—first a myth, this slowly became accepted fact and then came into question again. Our wintering blackcaps turned out to be refugees from harsh winters in Eastern Europe; nothing is so simple. Everything flows—especially rivers. What will the Thames look like in a hundred years time? Will we see crocodiles crowding the papyrus beds at Richmond? It might add some spice to the boat race—no more throwing the winning cox in—maybe the losing one. You can’t step twice in the same day.

<<