Haste

Haste

In the cobbled lanes of yesterday’s city, where the old rail line still hums a forgotten night‑song, hasten comes like a sudden turn of a wind turbine, leaving the hawthorn with a dented leaf, the kettle hissed beyond the calm.

A commuter struts through the platform, pressed boots against the bamboo‑clipped rail, his timetable scrawled in a darker ink, his watch a small‑talker of seconds, while the crowd behind him pulses in a swift station‑dance.

Colour drifts in amber drops from the harsh street‑lamps, light caught in a hurry, pull‑back, back‑to‑back, sprints along the Thames, where the tide waits to be cried into a green‑lit sky of fast‑economy and louder breath.

Haste, the restless horse, its hooves beating the cobbles, ignores the quiet in the shop’s window— the tea pot bubbles with patience, the scone sprinkles the crumbs of memory.

The bus arrives, a breath of diesel, the whistle blows, the doors swing—a sequence of sounds that cut across the quiet hum of the chiming clock, the smell of curry shop kilns, the distant whir of a bicycle, and the half‑completed sentence on a newspaper spread:
“There’s no time for it, the lesson’s on the shelf.”

So we hold our hands out, drawing a breath between the smog and the sea, to understand that haste does not remind, it merely carries us — unsung, enshrouded.

For in the bewildering rush of the kingdoms of the day the big trains, the bustling market stalls, the late‑night bus, we cease to feel the darkness before the light, the pause in our

‑ and perhaps, just perhaps, we learn that in the end[ed sayings],
the tape is the same, we just wave our hands across the rhythm, that a step taken with care, even a single moment slower, makes the world less thick with a querer I never met.