In the dying of the day
London gently falls asleep
A kinder stiller pace descends
Through its over trodden streets
Pleasanter to navigate
No wearing teaming endless crowds
Unaware their cloak hindering
Leisurely tour vehicles quietly swept away
Once where tourists milling incessantly abounded
During every long cold, hot rainy or windy whatever kind of day
A seamless obstructive physical shroud
Is seen at every attraction
Leaving those who work and live here
In a constant state of chosen retraction
Neon signs lightens and colours
The black horizon glinted sky
Icons of brands glisten
Beckoning forth to admire
Historic buildings lit up to say
We are still the country that held political sway
Doors no longer open
In iconic stores on Oxford Street
Where office bods lunch so spritely
Barely time to stop and eat
Navigating through the city
Like the charge of the life brigade
To save the time that
Trickles through our hands
As an old fashioned time
A glass that releases the ever flowing sands
Where earlier traversed pavements
Now loom large and so ambulatory clear
Affording space and peace to stroll
Along this tapestry of historic laden cloth
Ancient Londinium long capital of our sceptred isle
Where a palace in its center majestically resides
Reminding all of a power
Once in an empire held
It's custodians the holders
Of many a subjects unwhispered desireÂ
So long and fervently coveted
From the Monarchy its Queens, Princesses and Dukes
Dawn reprieves the light
Slanting through the gathered low strung clouds
Shards of silver rays peep shyly through
As a child through railings of a staircase
On on a snowy festooned Christmas night
Early morning promenade is lead to its conclusion
Upon the arrival of the pale warming sun
To slip away to home in a secret oasis of quiet calm
Till curiosity inevitably awakens yet once more
Beckoning to have its freedom without restraint
Yearning to repeat a silent stroll along
The swirling swish of the river unteathered
To re-energise to capture a flow of freedom
Separated from the jungle caught in the den
In the inescapable grasp of the
Jaws of its Lion our keeper chaining us
In the city surround everyone yearning
To escape the frenetic madness
Longing for peace and natures sounds
In the city of stone where fresh air no longer feeds
Yet can make us stumbleÂ
Until we promise to disentangleÂ
From the ego's strangling ivy reeds
At last our senses regained
Fleeing to the lush green of parks
Encouraging to take a walk again
In the country through our many unspoiled fields.
Copyright Natasha Anne Kelleher 9th September 2018
