One Sunday in London

One Sunday in London

by Mark Sadler

In the doldrums of

a June weekend

I spied through the

stretched-out dregs

of a foamy lace-work

clinging to the interior of a pint glass,

the remnants of a Sunday carvery -

a slender side of beef

too narrow to stand upright,

it's rough-hewn upturned face

a sunburned pink

with the texture of abraded rope.

The landlord, who had a

predilection for fanciful re-tellings

of London history,

that elbow-nudged his establishment

towards the centre of things,

was idly boasting

to a foreign tourist

drinking at the bar:

“This is the oldest pub in the city.”

(This happens concurrently at multiple locations across the capital)

Miles away,

unnoticed by the endless footfall

on the Charing Cross Road,

a tarred shadow, infused with the totality

of night that has steeped for hours

in its own fermenting darkness,

was leaking from the black-washed walls

of a guitar shop

out through the open doorway

where it obliterated

the pale mid-afternoon shade

that laid delicate, faint overlapping patterns

of roving legs and static street furniture

onto the paving slabs.

In the square mile

the mirror glass of the tall buildings

captured blurry fragments of the surrounding skyline

as indistinct as the outline of a distant

hedgerow draped in morning fog

and the open columned steeple

of a city church put stone bars

across a rectangle of blue sky

and on the cornice stones of bridges

small trees slanted towards

the nearest unobstructed source of light;

scouted out small speculative territories;

poised to reclaim the city.

Far away

at the Southernmost

extremities of the Northern Line

a man reached from his

hospice bed to brush

the white-washed wallpaper

of an unfamiliar room

with his finger tips

as if the embossed pattern

were Braille

The randomness of

the bumpy texture

matched perfectly

the shifting patterns

of small wavelets

on the choppy surface

of the river Thames.