Level 8

We are eight floors up;
grey looks out on grey.
If it wasn't for the magenta sofa
on the hotel balcony opposite,
I'd swear we were in black and white.
A monochrome day:
all billowing smoke-clouds,
when you imagine what London used to be like,
where scratchy rain cross-hatches
on our eighth-floor window,
copying the Gherkin's outer shell.
You can't really tell it's windy because
there is nothing green to sweep and shake,
not even a sepia London Plain to
rattle its baubles in the breeze.
Aerials ping the rare sun rays back at us,
sparkling silver like
cutter's scars against the dark towers.
A lone seagull swoops,
a window-cleaning crane winches its way skywards,
someone takes a flash photograph in a building across the way,
a first-day security pass shot, or board-room handshake captured,
and we look up
wondering if it's lightning,
then go back to tapping our keyboards
and sighing at the rain.