Across the sea of arms and heads

A gold helmet breaks the horizon,

Grotesque, beautiful.

Reflected in the dome are angled eels of hands

Around the wearer.

A diver, perhaps,

Swimming the straits of a carriage

Pulsing with commuter anemones.

The incongruity dreamlike.

Jacques Cousteau static in a shoal

Of morning worker fish.

Or an astronaut, transfixed by a

First step onto a populous planet.

The contours catch the lights of

Marble Arch.  The head turns.

A bespectacled cyclist of

Some years and creased brow.

Dive.  Dive.  Dive.

We’re off to Bond Street.