Running Full-Pelt Down a Hill with a Bellyful of Handpicked Blackberries1
Lee Nelson
I want to change the atmosphere2
to ride this sphere a different way
ride out the fear I feel today
look on green and breathe and say
come one
come all
short stay
long stay
park the car
and get away
Climb high above
the grim array
of grey-brick slicks
and wreckage left
when life’s not housed
but just contained
contained
constrained
strained
and stained
with sewage grey
with wasteland grey
with deadline grey
with grey today
and break away
See green-cell-grey
the greened-cell grey
of thought
of time
of time to think
of time to walk
of time to pray to
whoever feels like what you need to
if you pray
or call it prayer
just talk as equals anyway
1On the Barton Hills walk, one of the people that came along was so excited by the whole outdoors and space of it that he ran, top speed, down a 35 degree slope, having tasted every fruit he could from the hedgerow, with a smile a mile wide splitting his face. He was an asylum seeker, a farmer who had been in Luton, indoors, for months. It was the most beautiful sight of an often unbeautiful summer.
2 This first line comes directly from an email another asylum seeker sent me saying why they wanted to come on the walk.
