They looked and turned away
Londoners afraid to interact
With the girl sitting, weeping
On a stinkingly hot day in the city
Exclaiming that she had gone blind
Oversized suitcase abandoned near her feet
My feet
Someone pushed a cold drink into my hand
A woman’s voice comforted me
A stranger joined me on the step, asked where I was going
Told me that a long hot walk carrying a load
Had affected my sight
Sat until, miraculously, my sight returned
Then left
Pulling myself to my feet
I retrieved the offending suitcase
Slowly made my way to the Tube station
Continued my journey, moving from London to Oxford
Changing university, leaving friends and home city
Aiming for a Doctorate, I should have noted the omen
For I found loneliness and failure
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem first appeared in September 2016 on Silver Birch Press. It describes the actions of a unique person in London — a kind stranger. I’m a Londoner and I love my home city, but it can be a brutal place. I was moving a suitcase full of books from London to Oxford, where I hoped to earn a Doctorate in the “Angular momentum of the Earth.”
I didn’t.
Very kind of them indeed. London is so heavily populated.
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………..and getting busier and busier all the time
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I lived and worked there Jan 2011 to Feb 2012. So different from my first stay there 1972 to 1973.
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My memory of 1970s London is a run down city. By the 1980s, when I was a student in central London, things were picking up and radicalising. Now it’s unaffordable.
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It was expensive back the 1970’s I shared a twin bedroom in a flat of six people in Hammersmith and it was quite pricey as rents went.
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What a scary experience! Thank heavens for the kind stranger.
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Yes, it was scary. I do endeavour to be that kind stranger .
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I suspect you already are in such situations. 🙂 Passing it forward.
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