I went shopping today.
I crossed that street we had crossed together,
The one close to the river
and the theatre.
You remember that day we met there?
It was cold and wet then
Just as it was today.
I went to the same cafe
and bought a coffee for one.
I hope for your return.
There is no promise you will come.
These days I wait for the sun
but hang on to my furled umbrella.
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
Asked to write a love poem and finally lost for words!
This love? that love? how many have there been?
and who of them was first? probably fair Psyche,
she who burned Eros’ wings, in the dark unseen
and put his feet to flight. There’s a lesson there.
It’s hardly likely, after that, I’d fall in love so quickly ,
but I did, with Guinevere, and she ran off with Lancelot!
ah how women do deceive! it made me feel quite sick!
After that I sat about and thought.
It all seemed like a shot in the dark.
Wendy was too soppy. Maid Marion seemed brave and kind
but she was always off with Robin shooting arrows in the wood.
I wanted one who was strong and good, the sort I couldn’t find,
one who liked what I did instead of what they thought I should.
Some one who understood! I was young and stupid.
So much for Cupid! Wild thoughts ran round my head.
A friend came by to see me, said “STOP READING BOOKS!”
”If you want to know what women are like drag one into bed”.
So I did. I chose one only for her looks. A big mistake.
It’s more than looks that make a girl. I soon found out.
I went back to the library and searched amongst the shelves.
I read history, not mythology. I was seeking hard, firm facts.
Not much mention of the woman I needed there.
Battling, defeated, Boudicca had some appeal,
Joan of Arc, a little mad, Cleopatra sounded bright.
All were doomed. Past age. All done and dusted, Dead.
And then I found the poets. Their voices burned the page.
Poems of love and loss and passion, sacrifice, desire
It set my heart afire. Visions of real love filled my throbbing head.
I saw that you must work at it, losing is better than never having.
Its torture, sad, tragic, maddening. It’s happiness, joy, and magic.
It’s worth fighting for and always trying. Real Love is never dead.
I sat in a noisy cafe, reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets,
glanced across the room. I saw her there composed.
She seemed complete.
She was reading Keats. I smiled.
“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art…”
Good start. Our glances became frequent.
I took up courage, walked across. “You like T.S. Eliot?’
”Oh yes! I love him! Dylan Thomas?”
I smile again, nodding, offering her coffee.
We smiled and talked and talked. I walked her home.
Spent all night writing poems on her doorstep.
Fortunately it was summer. I didn’t freeze to death.
My poems only purpose was to make her love me.
I wanted her to love me more than all the poets.
She inspired me. She desired me. She was the first –
my sonnet.
i walk through Hyde Park
as dawn rises to morning
my head still full of music, trance dance,
spins in the freshness of early risen light
i head for the river, embankment, bridges
passing a cafe window i catch her glance
a smile, she turns away to her coffee
the image of her profile engraved on my retina
i walk on and never forget her
such are the tricks of chance and no chance
i watch the arc of a pigeons flight
a feather drops at my feet
a second gift from this city
the only gift i can touch
The smell of roast coffee haunts the street.
I wait to reach it, breath deep
as we pass, my mothers high heels clatter
briskly across the cellar grating as she drags me
by that alluring café where people are talking.
I imagine them all as artists, writers,
just as I want to be. Is coffee the key?
In summer, roses and sun cream,
the smell of a warm tennis ball,
at the pool, fluoride burns in my throat,
hot tarmac, big roller pressing it flat.
The heat of a greenhouse full of tomatoes,
geranium leaves crushed between fingers,
new mown lawns and sprinklers.
Wet dogs, the strong deep smell of horse,
bran mash and hay, wintergreen, autumn, leather,
new baked bread and a simmering curry.
More pungent the scent of a dark, damp wood,
seaweed on the wind by the ocean
that catches my heart and opens my lungs.
No hurry then as the world stands still.
My father smelled of sawdust, tweed,
tobacco, fresh paint and engine oil,
of his indefinable tribal self,
nothing like anyone else.
As a child that smell meant safe,
warm as the smell of a fir tree
bedecked in Christmas lights,
firelight shadows on walls.
I can recall the perfume,
the scent, the pure animal smell,
of everyone I ever loved.
Now give me oranges, rosemary,
bergamot bottled, uncorked,
for comfort alone.
The Dreaming Path 