Currency

The height of high street surely has passed;
the lazy river experience failing fast-
I’ve seen images-19th century-
when it was horses, chimneys
and churches and curious specks
of pond life posing, blackeners
blackening their white future,
the past the same, the architecture
a state of grace above the glare
but it wasn’t ways retail that set the heart racing-was it? The heart, the centre-
Was it world wars, a sense of scarcity? Why the dynamo of the human flow of town and city? Spend spend spend?
When you busk or beg or spend time
instead of money in a town centre
you get to see how mad we’ve become
but dear hamsters, the wheels are coming off. Where is our centre
without that lure?
I’ll meet you there.