This Poem Comes To Me [or Sydenham Hill] Poem by Alexander Pearson

Walking up Sydenham high street.
It was cold, not so cold as you might wear an extra layer
or wish that you had
just cold enough that you are probably wearing the wrong thing.
It’s a walk I've done a thousand times
very familiar to me, the distance, my position
but never the gradient.
I have never strolled up this hill
Though I have tried several times to stroll down.
It is on a morning like this that I, momentarily
as the Americans say
Pass by an unusually long brick alley way
It is then that this poem comes to me