Tale of the London Eye

Before we left London, before we took our leave of Big Ben,
of Westminster Abbey and of London Bridge, we just had to, out
of necessity and out of a sense of adventure, look London square in the eye.
And by that I mean the London Eye, the largest Ferris wheel in Europe,
towering high above the Thames, a modern marvel, a mechanical wonder.

Such circular grandeur cannot be merited in mere words,
it needs to be experienced first hand--and that is what we did.
So with measured excitement, and with a modicum of trepidation,
we parked our arses in the awaiting car, royal in its bearing,
a plush red seat with shiny brass buttons,
(allow me license, please, for rivets is a less becoming word),
and decorated with the crests of English royalty!

Then up we went, as if the world were falling into oblivion.
So high the River Thames receded like a feeble trickle in the Earth.
A thousand wires straining from the center hub our only means of life!
This was the London Eye, all right, but maybe it should be a maw,
since we were nothing but gnaw-bits high in the London fog!

Titanic was the torque, rotation on some other scale.
There were other people, far away, yet just as insignificant as we,
reliant on an arm of unearthly dimensions, arcing beyond absurd legitimacy,
taunting physics and seemingly gloat-sated at the expense of our mortal awe.

An iron bar coated with warty rubber maintained the specifications
of British safety proximate to our Yankee laps.
Movement was NASA-like, only with an indifferent laziness;
any potential moon-shot would wait for the changing of the guard.

Therefore we as breathless riders felt the wink of London Eye.
Motionless, we were marooned along the Eye’s expansive arc;
the British Isles fled away as we were eye-to-eye with dread.
Pea-soup fog was like glaucoma for this massive eye;
tomorrow never came as we bade time and space.

30 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
5-3-13