I used to live across the road from Norwood Park in South London. Underneath, a branch of the Effra runs down towards West Norwood Cemetery – where urban myth has it the river once dislodged a coffin and sent it floating downstream to the Thames. The Effra is now mostly buried, brought into the sewer system, although a series of pavement markers trace its course, through Norwood, Dulwich, Brixton and on towards the Thames and ultimately the sea.

Perhaps the subterranean presence of one of London’s lost rivers explains the attraction of the park to willows. Towards the south east corner, there used to be four, large, old, twisting willow trees. My youngest son called this group his Magic World of Willows. In spring and summer, he’d make us step beneath the weeping canopy and enter into what felt like a tree chamber – which he insisted was another dimension.

One day we were shocked to discover that one of these willows had been cut down. Soon another had to be taken as well. I think they had become rotten. The trunk of the larger one is still there, as a tempting climbable seat. I felt the loss of those trees keenly. However, the inventor of the ‘Magic World of Willows’ had another idea. I wrote a poem about it, which was recently published on the wonderful Crow & Cross Keys.

You can read it here, on the Crow & Cross Keys site, along with another poem, called: “You find it soon enough up there, or it finds you”. That one, which appears above the willows, is about a mysterious creature, or creatures on the South Downs, which may or may not exist.