Every day I walk

Every day I walk

Strange it is, after so many years

To see the same faces

On different bodies

Worried frowns of newborns

Propped up in buggies

As young mothers run off the weight

Wheels tracking through an ice-cream cone

Dropped in the dirt by an infant

A mum in too much of a hurry to notice

The childhood loss

Etched on the face of a toddler

Already beginning to realise

What they might have missed

I looped over Canary Wharf

Down to Surrey Quays

How different it must have been

Close to a century ago

When the boats came in with

Stragglers from Europe

Looking for safe haven

Once again people

Are displaced by war

Although not directly into London

Unless they have a visa

But rather from a channel ferry

Or Eurostar express

Chased down by autocratic monsters,

Running from the beast

So many people

Living in fear of the future

Wicked fakers, raking in the coppers

Spreading stories of an apocalypse

As tyrants build empires

When the true sage knows

What happens will always be man-made

I wonder about you

It is easy, a tight blouse and cleavage

The generous curve

Of your neck

Would that you walked with me

Instead of sneaking into my head

When the smell of coffee awakens

The memory

Of lazy Sundays

Reading the papers in bed

Discussing politics in comfort

Catching up on all the news

I have music in my ears

A personalised playlist for walking

With headphones

This reminds me of listening to Pink Floyd’s

Ummagumma in an attic room

High on something

In a kind of dream state

Convinced someone was coming up the stairs

Believing it was a ghost until

The track changed

Running down the street on the white line

Beating the lights

Before they beat me

And I walk

Full of nostalgia for Limehouse

Chinese laundries and the fiction

Of Sherlock Holmes

Oh how we enjoyed tuning in

To watch him joust with Moriaty

As Doctor Watson looked on

From the sidelines

In a London I still recognise

From all the other places I have lived

Since last we walked

These city streets together.

Sometimes, in the early morning

I can hear a footfall in the distance

It sounds so much like yours

And I wonder

Where did all the time go

Where does it all come from?