On Hampstead Heath

There is a certain kind of light on the Heath, washed out, always, whatever the weather. It's what the sky looks like when the city has been taken out of the way, cloudy or clear. Still chalky with the dusty trace of metropolis. Sunday millions of people who wish for immortality but don't know what to do with themselves go to walk, crossing expanses of grass, with twisted trees. The Dwarf Birches and the Birch Clearing, Esenin and Iwaszkiewicz, benches 'in memory', and swimming ponds sometimes. Even magnolia explosion muffled by our looking on. Can we take the Heath seriously? Ourselves?! What a joke! Better take a dog and a ball, a tool to launch it, an extendable lead for holding. The terrestrial aviator flying kites. The runner, or jogging. Maybe even sports-walking with sticks, and those ring shaped liquid bottles like shackles upon each arm. Lycra telling the elastic truth about bodies, and the onus of their owners. Their noses and arses. A beautiful light on the Heath; perfection in the realm of the imperfect. Fills the head at least.