For a small town girl
Alone in the sprawl of the creaking metropolis
She kept to the bustle of the hurrying crowd
Lacking the courage to explore
London’s surfeit of nooks and crannies

Where Dickens once walked the
Victorian cobbled alleys and beyond
Passed unnoticed by wide eyed tourists
Harried by their clip board minders
Mindful to keep to the tight schedule.

Long enough now for wonder to subside
With time to absorb the lessons to be learnt
By taking the bus over Westminster Bridge
To avoid the Tube’s rush hour crush of humanity
and the wandering hands of marauding touchy feelers

Friends are hard to find north of the Thames
Work time colleagues return home to suburbia
Leaving London to the empting streets
Feral cats emerge to scavenge the waste bins
While the bag lady beds down in a vacant doorway

In an Italian coffee house on the Lambeth embankment
She found a special place to sit and scribble
Where the customers provided flesh for her characters
Where Giovanni breaks into song when the trade slackens
and Amor di Pastorello is in tune with the lapping tide