There were Flowering Cherry trees

On Sewardstone Road

Bordering the Hackney side of Victoria park

They presaged summer

Everything seemed brighter when they bloomed

The sun blinked and scattered

Splitting white light

Into a million jagged pieces

Streaked through with cherry pink

The air filled with snow petals

A soft pinkish blanket

There was romance in the setting

Young lovers sat on benches

By the boating lake

Sharing a bagel

Drinking chocolate shakes

Laughing at the way the Geese prioritised themselves

Over the Ducks

All of them bickering for crumbs

As large carp swam in the shallows

Keeping clear of the anglers

Under the bridge

On the other side, by the canal

They are bottom feeders

(the fish, not the anglers…although)

But food fish in some cultures

Not so much in Hackney

A forty-something man

With Downes Syndrome struggled

With the notion of a dark side

Everyone told him he didn’t have,

Expecting him to be happy

He cried with me

The only time he ever did

Big boys are not meant to cry

Apparently,

We went for a walk in the rain

He didn’t want to disappoint his dad

Who was widowed

They never discussed each other’s feelings

He thought he might be gay

But how could he say

When his dad refused to talk about sex

And the possibility he might want a relationship

He thought it made him mean to others

His dark side

I enjoyed our chats

As I tried to help him make sense

Of this and that

But before he could decide what to do

He died

His dad cried when we talked

For the first time, he said, since his boy’s birth

When the doctors had told him and his late wife

That their son was disabled

It was highly likely that he would die before he left his teens

‘But lived until he was 42

And now I am 79…what am I going to do?’

Whatever I said would seem disingenuous

So we sat and watched the blossom

Whilst it floated silently in the air

As brightly lit as a family of Glowworms

On a spring breeze

Doing nothing but be,

In broad daylight

On a side street in Hackney