THE BIRDMAN OF ABBEY PARK

More wanderer than beggar,
The Birdman of Abbey Park
Is a solitary mister
Like Dylan’s lonely hunchback,
He rests between trees and water
And listens to the birds talk.

Beyond the island and the weir,
Under windcheater and rucksack,
He appears mainly in dry weather
To loll on sloping grass the better
And wait for swan, goose and duck
To swoop and splash and honk and quack.

For unto him they will surely gather,
Though often in a blitz when he will chuck
Thick sandwiches at them like flak
Until the sirens of their beaks tire
And they wait, then merely loiter
As the Birdman sprawls supine and slack

Before stretching his long legs to kick
At the sky, or arching that lean back
Like the stone bridge that spans the river
Green with algae, lily-pads and weed-wrack
At the end of the time-flown summer
To await the winter’s cold, grey dredger.

Watch him on his gangling walk:
Shunning eye-contact, head thrown back,
The birdman has no eyes for ruins or lake
Nor for flowers or Pets Corner,
No eyes for book or newspaper,
No eyes for you and none for me neither.

About my age but angular, taller,
Imperious as a hawk,
Silent as the heron on the weir,
He heads straight down to the river
For his distant, never changing mark
Where he stays till he slips away in the dark.


(2009)

The Dylan mentioned in the opening stanza is our old friend Dylan Thomas again and I am reminded of his poem, ‘The Hunchback In The Park’ every time I see the Birdman. The rhyme-scheme is an echo of that in the DT poem although mine sustains the same two rhyme-sounds throughout.

One of the park-keepers told me that he’d been trying to engage the Birdman in conversation for many years but had never been so much as looked in the eye by him, let alone had a word back. I once took some pictures of the Birdman doing his weird calisthenic-type exercises but they mysteriously disappeared. Hopefully, I’ll catch him again and include a shot here just to prove that he really does exist.

I took the shot above in the snow just before Christmas when I saw him there in his usual place before the birds came to him. By the time I came back round, they had, as you can see, ‘gathered unto him.’

We’re very fortunate to have this beautiful park almost on our doorstep. It’s every bit the equal of London’s famous green spaces.