Christmas in London

Perhaps then I am dull of soul,

That I can walk through London’s lights

And see only crowds, impenetrable.

Jostling, confusing, noisy,

A shock from my quiet home.

The bare trees seem to have no place

Amid this concrete land,

The din of thousands ripples

The water of the seeping Thames,

Purple and red, blue and yellow

Flashing lights, pulsing without a heart,

I watched the crowds I did not understand their victory.

I was a frog burning in a desert,

A rabbit in the streetlights of Christmas

I thought I knew London, as my feet sung on the stone,

I passed St Martins, no longer in the fields,

The church was my compass, but it pointed not.

I know Paris and its compasses,

Like the Sacre Coeur and

The church of Notre Dame de Lorette,

They point south.

But as the train left the station

I felt the familiar pull against nature,

I remembered that travelling

Takes you out of your comfort zone.