Taxi Driver

The Night‑Shell

In the hum of a sleepless city
the cab’s metal shell glimmers under drizzle and neon,
a quiet companion to the midnight markets,
a capsule that hums along the A‑4 and the old London Bridge.

The driver, a librarian of street‑breezes,
reads the city’s weather‑notes on the counter‑pane,
tells each fare the same whispered truth:
“We’re all just a ride away from somewhere new.”

With a steady hand he steers through the fog,
every turn a lyric, every stop a pause,
the dashboard a metronome in the deep saxophone of traffic.
He knows the pubs that hide between turnpike adverts,
the bakeries that open before the sun has a chance to rise.

Clinch the keys; the engine’s growl sings,
then the world melts into a backdrop of ticking clocks and distant sirens.
He welcomes strangers with an umbrella, a flick of his thumbs,
his laugh is a kind of safety rope that never quite splits the dim.

Under the street‑lamp windows, the city spreads its tired silk:
the Thames glints like a heartbeat in Richmond,
the Houses of Parliament whisper of forgotten days,
the red double‑deckERS crawl, fitfully, toward the East End’s steel‑lit roar.

On the quiet stretch between Whitby and Wigan,
he watches the night’s silhouettes – the lone figure on a bench, the stray dog in puddles,
the couple clutching a yellow umbrella in a sudden midday rain.
The world outside the glass is a moving tableau of wishes and roads ahead.

The cab is his book of voices, the door a hinge on destiny.
He reads, he pauses, he records the city’s whispered poems.
When the final fare leaves, he locks the door,
leaving the streets with a faint echo of something very human.

The taxi driver is the city’s quiet chronicler:
he watches the interplay of light and shadow, the cycle of cars, the silent rhythm of rain,
and he knows that, in a single journey, you can see the whole of London glazed in the colour
of a midnight drizzle.