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