city animals: beasts

city animals: lions

city animals: pegasus

city animals: drift bestiary

The images in this and the next three posts come from a long drift in the area of the City and the Inns of Court in London. I didn't set out with animals on my mind, but I kept seeing them (or their representations) and photographing them; they are everywhere. Most of these animal forms relate to arcane bestiaries connected to the law, commerce, the monarchy, the state. A couple are from art nouveau lifts I chanced upon.

While some of these animal presences are innocuous, some are mysterious, like shadow daemons from another time, waiting and watching. When I looked back at a couple of them, they had moved. Like grandmother's footsteps.

I'll let you decide which ones you think they were.

last day on planet d

B takes a photograph with her eye.

S paints in the crust of salt with a finger of spit.

T wheels the last piano onto the fire.

P throws stones at a rock.

The afternoon turns over in its sleep,

then sleeps.

C trades her kingfisher skull for

a tinned peach. M traps air in a screw-

top jar. F plants the last of his teeth.

L pulls up the ladder,

Secures the hatch.

For Catriona S; adapted from Simon Armitage