Poems for Saddlers Square

Saddler’s Mill Stream Square

Stop. Listen.
Put down your shopping bags.

Put away your phones
and casual conversations.

Tune out the hustle and bustle
of Enfield Town.

Listen instead to the trees talk
and the fallen pine cones chatter.

Listen instead to the underground water
speak of its long journey,
its long history.

We too have all come a long way
to be here today.

We too can be part of a dialogue:
speaking to but above all
listening to one another

and to the hidden water,
as it splashes and bubbles,
telling us:

Be clear, be strong,
be generous, be  enduring.
Above all, be life- giving.

CHRISTINE VIAL
January 2025

Saddler’s Mill Stream

Away from busy Church Street
listen for the pulsing replenishment
of this little runaway -

The secret silvery seam
hidden beneath sitter and seat
to Palace Gardens Square

That meanders. Ducks.
and trickles to gush. Wends
and bends its watery way

To mould earth-stone and cut
the mud crevasse beneath
the snaking seat

To the sitter’s feet, where
this millstream competes
With that stream of Internet ;

Of I-phone, and the bedevilled
blink of the Instagram
and Hyperlink ; the deluge

of Google news, and multitude
of WhatsApp's as the water persists
to solicit sitter to seat

to turn that ‘ on ’ button ‘ off ‘ -
Let go the heavy load of wares
and cares - Sitting here

Retreating and idling
in Palace Gardens’ Square -
To the lyre of the water sprite

To the seep of its slipstream
Of undulating dreams - From that rising
effervescent song

On the thoughts which harbour here
near the millstream’s silvery seam
which only the silent listener

hears within Palace Gardens' Square.

Mary T Duggan