Re-read October 2026 at the launch of Naomi Jaffa’s book of poems in the Halesworth Book shop.
On the other side, the view is different.
No time to lingering on a thought.
Is he running over time? Someone late?
Did I leave that window open?
In this hierarchy, we are unseen,
I am at ease. Poets chat away.
Hatted girls with long legs loiter,
Waiting for the poet maestro,
While lines of chairs we straighten,
tidiness upheld, water jug refilled,
next event researched, handouts
at the ready.
Windows open. Then, us Cinema Girls take tea.
But always to remember, Bounty bar patrol
For one year one got taken, so we tease the story,
Ease into each other, a strangers dance.
Corner pieces of our lives exchanged.
…….
Fresh fish and chips, window shopping,
Watching booted, leggened, laughing girls in taupe
Eyes like flies on nicknacks, made in China
to last as long as a prawn sandwich.
Dress shops flourish now as Butchers or Fishermen then
Herring now a bone on jackets, in Butchers habidashers
Their window, a symphony to well healed
Camel hair coats, sensible shoes.
Andrew Motion, Robert Hass, giants of English words
Talk war: How can we non-combatants
Describe this brutality? Do we dare?
Better to be ashamed, than say nothing.
Roger McGough, in full Jubilee Hall
Through pebbled glasses reads
‘Conversation with lenses’
Years of rhythm heart beating in a voice.
He did not stop. He wished he’d done those things,
Like dive naked into the sea. A dash
of red kerchief out of breast pocket.
The Albanian and a suave silver haired man, smoke
Complicitously outside. ‘Let me tell you’ she began
‘How wonderful is my father, and how like him I grow.’
Ah the bald ease of an east european sense of self.
We re-arranged the boxes, closed and opened windows.
Took the lemon out of the water (a potential choker)
Odd what we did not ask, as snippets of a life unfolded.
I see your bother leaking plum juice on his carpet.
You alerted me to pejoratives, like commitment.
After all the words, how sweet it is
To lay in a strangers bed. Outside
Seagulls calling, a dog curled up beside,
To find in another’s book case and read
Ruth Rendell whodoneit.
Sea breathing, living on an island.
