London Fire Watcher

I walk the cobblestones of Queen Victoria
Street, rubbing the black soot from my
bloodshot eyes and whisking
snow-like flakes from my flat cap.
A stench crawls the road beside me
in a souring color of gaslight,
flaming like golden fire,
not yet pinched by
the lamplighter’s snuffer. The night’s
rubble crunches under my shoes
as my walk stirs thick grey fog
working hard to conceal
a bomb crater that is too big to hide.
The tea shop is a jigsaw pile of
burnt bricks, next to the Meadows’
house, a two-story pile of smoking
embers still cooking the family’s flesh.
One day the bomb crater will moan
below a new post office, and the tube
that served so many will be a tour relic
serving a coterie of crying ghosts.