Eagle

Eagle, Cumbria

all images copyright JGBellorini 2007

Shaheen

From a bus or car you’d not notice the Falcon – a carved stone Victorian decoration on the gate post of what was once a mansion house (probably for the railway manager of nearby Clapham Junction way back when). It sits now almost entirely shrouded in the foliage of the unruly trees around it, its squat, broad shoulders and details of the face etched away by rain and pollution. Even so, there it sits as a reminder of the proud heritage it surveys; the lane beyond retaining the name ‘Falcon Mews’. I notice it passing by at street level, a blackbird watching it gingerly from a nearby branch. Even this stone falcon, this representation of the Arab ‘shaheen’ retains some powerful aspect of a living original. It’s in the eyes still, those acute organs that even here, though grey and unmoving, seem to be able to spot the tiniest detail, to follow the multitude of living things passing on the street before it in their buses and cars and decide for itself which one shall be its prey. As if to prove my flight of fancy, the blackbird scurries off sounding its rapid alarm. The falcon of course remains unmoved. After all, it has all the time in the world.

NB 'shaheen' is an Arabic word for a falcon

London, 17/5/07

Cormorant Island

The River Thames at Battersea – brown and fast moving here, the current carrying lines of mucky rubbish and jetsam upstream: plastic bottles, Coke cans and a variety of driftwood and other matter hinting at the life downstream; from the sandbars of Southend or the pier walkers of Kent – who knows? Amid this tidal drift stands an old wooden wharf, lost now from the shore by decay, green with algae and weathered to a sheen, but still standing mid-stream, where Cormorants and a pair of Canada Geese pass the time, preening and watching the river traffic in the lee of the London Heliport. The birds may even have nested there, its hard to tell from my viewpoint on the shore; one of the Cormorants sits on the far lip of the wooden structure, its beak in the air, slightly arrogant in fact, whilst the others stand sentinel nearby airing their wings, stretching their lithe bodies and wagging their heads. Whilst I return to the daily grind of a computer screen their faces appear to be constantly smiling, a spark in their eyes and the sly upturn at the corner of their beaks, like they’ve been let in on some cosmic joke.

Battersea, London 16/5/07