Dusk is falling on the Parkland walk
the last remnants of walkers quicken their step
they’ve heard the rumours, and
the rumours are right.
The goat man’s eyelids open a
tiny crack.
The woman pushing her pram
hurries past. A low growl starts deep in the throat of the black dog tied to her pram …
the dog knows, oh yes he
knows…
he keeps his head low, stiff-legged
as they scurry past, down the steps and out onto the lane.
The last train chuffed its
way down this track in 1954.
Nature took over and time
stood still. Until in 1984, the Parkland Walk was born. Banks of weeds and brambles
were cleared, now Nature was to be conserved but controlled.
High up, where the walk
crosses a wide bridge
near Muswell Hill, the lights
of London are flickering on,in a sea of twinkles across to the Thames and beyond.
It’s a clear cold crispy
night and a full moon is rising.
The Spriggan lifts his grey
green head, stretches out cold stiff limbs and looks to the rising moon. He cocks his head,
listening …‘Can you hear it? Can you hear it? His croaking voice,
rusty as old iron, speaks in a hoarse whisper, to himself.
Chuff, chuff. Puff, puff. Whooo.. hooo, whooo…hooo.
the sound of a steam engine on missing tracks, missing since
all were lifted and sold for
scrap in 1984. The train is heading back
in time, back to a different
time, a time when iron gods were king.In the dead of night, time is suspended, time is malleable, an echo of the past.
The goat man raises his
eight-foot metal bulk, green with Verdigris
and rust. He begins his nightly
patrol along the shadowed walk,along the nature trails and ghostly paths of Alexandra Palace.
If any human were to tread
this dark and misty wooded way,
in the deepest night, would
they encounter this same giant cloven-hooved apparition?
I think not. Mystic magic
fades from view and
hides easily from human
sight. Stephen King’s Parkland Walk story, speaks of people known
to lose their way here, and some who lose their way … forever.
By day, the walk is green and
soft and full of light and air.
It is a haven now for many
species of birds and butterflies. City-worn humans come to run and walk and breathe
some cleaner air into their lungs.
By night, foxes bark and
breed, slow-worms, those snake-like lizards,
curl in dark hollows to
preserve any heat gathered from the day, and in the coldest part of winter, hibernate with the hedgehogs.
The Spriggan marches on, passing
overgrown platforms near Crouch End
and Muswell Hill. He melts back
into the urban, permaculture forestof trees and shrubs, as racing toward him, on the absent tracks,
he hears a whistle and hiss and rattle that warns him to stand aside.
Out of the dark and ghostly
gloom, a monster of iron and steel
shimmers into view, whoo,
whoo-ing a soft and spooky whistle.And lit by a shaft of moonlight, a whisper of grey steam floats
up from the chimney, rising to float across the moon.
As the train swishes past,
look, look, whose faces are gazing
from carriage windows
whisking past? Can that be Karl Marx’s towering form, seated in the driver’s cabin,
risen from his Highgate grave to join the proletariat at last?
Behind him see the
story-tellers – Chaucer, Pepys and Congreve…
Browning, Trollope, Dickens,
Austen and Mary Ann Evans, to give George Elliot her rightful name.
And oh the poets – Christina Rossetti and Coleridge,
again from Highgate graves, seated beside William Blake from Bunhill Row,
risen up with the other ‘non-conformists’, Bunyan and Defoe.
Crowded too among these
literary giants are misty murderers,
some hanged who got their
just desserts, like serial killer Christie, others maybe not, like Ruth Ellis, the last to be hanged, at Holloway.
Death is a great leveller is it not?
And Jack – who is that
shadowy figure behind them all, if not he?
All are crowding at the
windows to see the London of their pastsslipping by, the London they have lost.
The lights flicker across our
Spriggan man’s impassive face,
as each populated carriage
slides by, until the final coach appears, bolting towards him as a ghostly laugh echoes
down the walkways.
Seated on top of this final
wagon, cross-legged, blazing trident
held above his head, his
bronze-red skin glows and mad eyes burn like hot coals. He laughs a dangerous fearless laugh, as the train
mutters along the track, fading back into the haunted demon world.
The Green Faerie man turns
back upon the now silent walkway
and with a last glance
behind, continues his hooven trot, returningto his sheltered brick arch beside the short tunnel.
He is Spriggan, the Keeper and the Watcher,
guardian of abandoned ruins, some say a stealer of children,
who leaves a Spriggan substitute behind, but I say, not this Green Man,
this one has a benevolent eye.
Silence and darkness lie upon
the Parkland Walk again and
as a faint pink light starts
to tinge the distant horizon,his eyelids droop as he freezes into his usual pose.
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