In the Queue in the Waitrose Cafe, I Meet My Love
The man next to me in the queue is gorgeous.
It starts with him telling me I’ve dropped my pen
and I pick it up, though it’s not mine.
I’m almost sure he knew that anyway
so we talk about pens and dropping things.
I ask for a cappuccino and we’re on to poetry.
While the milk is frothed, he says for him
it’s about what sounds like daffodils.
I tell him about my rhyming dictionary.
He says, So you’re a clever girl then!
I smile, say, No, then, Yes, to chocolate.
We laugh as I hand over a five pound note.
If I were fifty years younger, I’d fall in love with you.
He says this as I hold out my hand for change.
All this in minutes, and I already love him.
He’s eighty-five, but I won’t believe it.
He looks at me from the corner of his eye,
gives a nod of knowing, asks for two cups of tea,
hooks his stick over his arm to pay.
I say, Lovely to meet you, walk to a table
past a woman who is smaller than him,
creased into a chair and wearing pink socks.
I look up at them from time to time.
I see their silence. It’s been a long time.
It’s just been a long, long time.
Liz Lefroy‘s most recent pamphlet, GREAT MASTER / small boy (Fair Acre Press, 2021), has been acclaimed by Andrew McMillan as ‘perfectly tuned’. Her poems are like any clearly written tune, their cadences resonating long after the last line has faded. https://lizlefroy.wixsite.com/liz-lefroy
Darren Mason is a job coach by day, a creative practitioner by night. He likes to dabble with animation such as stop motion and paint / sand, and more recently digital animation. Another favourite outlet is partaking in lino printing.