It was an easy walk
from the Underground station
down the stairway
into the village of Kew
on the outskirts of London--
we're blessed with a bright day
and an understated village square.
Just a quick stroll
down an upper-middle-class street
with mostly compact
and a few mid-sized cars.
(Gasoline is too expensive
to warrant an excess of
low-mileage cars in the UK.)
Rows of standardized houses,
all of them
two-story affairs.
Then, buildings containing flats (estates?)
probably built
sometime after the war
that threatened to erase
villages such as Kew.
And finally,
we reach the massive Kew Gardens
with the recreations of
rainforests and desert climates,
plus the Victorian glass greenhouse--
and the knowledge that somewhere on the gardens' edge
is the River Thames.
There will always be an England.
And I'm ever so happy
to have seen a quiet, manicured corner of it
at this point in my life.
