Old music: Ronnie Lane – The Poacher

Some musicians simply seem to "belong" to certain cities. For a generation of Londoners, and for many from subsequent generations, the Small Faces, the Kinks and the Who epitomised London – its attitude, arrogance and soul. Putting aside my inexplicable dislike of the Who and my very explicable love of Ray Davies, that just leaves the Small Faces, who were not merely from London but "of" London.

That Londonness – east London in their case – makes Ronnie Lane's solo work even more enigmatic. Lane developed, along with Rod Stewart and others, a peculiar brand of English folk-rock that evoked not the hustle and bustle of the metropolis, but the slow, quiet romance of the country. The Poacher is the greatest expression of Lane's rural dreaming.

Perhaps this bucholic yearning was a revolt against the harsh working-class life Lane had known as a boy, or against the unpleasant realities of the music business after a period in which he and the rest of the Small Faces had been left with little to show financially for years of worldwide success. Even Lane's clothes reflected his new direction in the 70s. When he wasn't with Stewart and the newly formed Faces, he wore old waistcoats, cravats and tatty old grandad shirts – you almost expected him to have an ear of corn hanging from his mouth. Some of the music was rambling and listless but it was touched with magic.

The Poacher appeared on his 1974 album Anymore for Anymore. It seems such an unassuming little song, and yet as it paints a picture of a wandering old loner by a river it grows into something much more. The Poacher becomes a moment out of time – for the subject, for the narrator of the song and for the listener. Sunbeams burst down on to the riverbank, you can smell the grass in the breeze and dragonflies hum over the water. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's how evocative this song is. It is, as Lane sings, about rejecting the world. But not in some superficial gap-year holiday way – it is about leaving the self behind completely.

Pop lyrics can aspire only to be poetic – they are not poetry in themselves – but the lines "Bring me fish with eyes of jewels and mirrors on their bodies/ Bring them strong and bring them bigger than a newborn child" come pretty close. Thanks to the strings and oboe of the refrain, and Lane's warm strumming, the music is as simple and as transcendant as the message.