On Day 12 of NapoWriMo (for which I am writing a poem a day throughout April) I was sitting in a 1940’s themed cafe called Fourteas in Stratford-upon-Avon. Two of us come from the UK and two from Australia. We have known each other online (as avatars only) for quite a long time but had met face to face for the first time only 2 days before.

The Day 12 poetry prompt for of the day was to write a Haibun about your surroundings. I wrote The Rain it Raineth Every Day (my post for April 12th) but suggested we all do one while sitting in the 1940’s cafe.

This is the result ~

from Keith ~

I’m sitting here out of the wind and rain
with the water running down the drain.
Oh, how I wish I was home, in the warmth of the sunshine.

Oh, happy days, happy days

I’m drinking tea
instead of coffee

Oh, happy days, happy days

We’re soon to leave these lovely people
to make a twenty-hour flight.
That will give us a fright.

Oh, happy days, happy days

We are going on a cruise and that’ll be swell
so hopefully all will be well.

Oh, happy days, happy days

We’re still sitting here with sandwiches and tea
and hope to be reunited with thee and thee

Oh, happy days, happy days

From Cath

Rain-soaked streets and drab shops
Bring back dog-eared layers of memory
Dragging dreary days filed in melancholy feeling.
Make do and Mend. Waste Not Want Not.
I remember factory girls clattering past,
Cloths tied around their heads,
Brushing by laughing and gossiping.
It was austere, all right.
They never had brie. Or grapes. Back then.
Only bomb-sites. And empty buildings.

Slipping realities. Sitting in a 1940s café with
A good friend I’ve only just met.
Are pixels more real than flesh?
Or prims less fake than war-time décor?
And what about that waitress with a German accent?

In the street, we dance Swan Lake in boots and coats,
With a real swan.
Who hisses. Pissed off.
It still rains.

from Barbara

Four fabulous friends, who met on the internet, find each other in real life,  laughing and having a fun and living the moment, enjoying each others company and hoping the day will never end. Amid spiced tea and sandwiches, precious memories are made, never to be forgotten.

Passing food amongst us all
Amid many smiles
Happiness is tangible

and from me

Churchill yells from the wall, ”Let’s go forward together!”
I look across the table. The Victoria Sponge is behind us. On closer inspection it’s dry and too heavy, rather like the days that are memorised here, in glamourised nostalgia.

I was born a little after the war and all I recall is the sweets still rationed and the bombsites; the sad, damp wall-paper flapping from shattered bedroom walls in the wind.

My newsfeed bleeps from my phone. Missiles aimed at Syria.

Back then Pearl Harbour was bombed.

The Chattanooga Choo Choo just keeps choo-chooing on.

Let’s stay at the tea table and just keep moving around. I’ll be the Hatter. You pour the tea. Be ‘mother’.

People have got to stop killing each other.

We’ll meet again.
Don’t know where.
Don’t know when.

 

 

 

Footnote: The word ‘prim’ is an abbreviation of ‘primative‘ – a word to denote a building block in alternative reality