Dave Bonta puts us on a plane coming down into London, looking at the city as it rises up to meet us. The opening image is the strangest and best: thousands of chimney pots seem to gape back at the passengers, so the looking goes both ways. The speaker calls it "a mutual amazement," as if the city were as startled by us as we are by it.
After that, the poem becomes a quick inventory of what the window shows: housing estates, scrapyards, a tidy park, messy allotments, circling traffic. Nothing is ranked or prettied up. The air is yellow, and the river carries a "slick sheen of a carcass," which is an unpleasant picture. The speaker seems fascinated rather than disgusted, though, taking in the whole scene with a curious, steady eye.
The ending softens the mood. The plane trees, with their cut-back limbs, make "faint, green gestures," a small and slightly sad sign of life. The mood is watchful and a little wistful, finding something tender in a grubby, crowded place.