Urban Shaman
Rapunzel Wizard
In the tropics of London
you get jungle, up here
it's forest thickets.
This was wildwood,
then stumpland,
now a tangle of streets,
but I never lose my way
on the spirit journey.
A canopy of low rise roofs
blur into distance,
overtopped by emergent
tower block pines.
No trance state is needed
when discarded flyers
curled up at the edges
like autumn leaves
litter the gutter,
and dotting stone pavements
are lichens of chewing gum.
I can read this language,
trace the ancestral essences.
The road is a watercourse
sploshing with car engines
to be forded at traffic lights.
No moss grows on the north side
in the plantation of council flats,
but satellite dishes all point south-east.
I will never lose my way.
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