CLOISTER AND PROMENADE

Under sun canopy among

emptying tables, he reads and reads,

hunched over heavy A4 paperback,

cup, saucer and plate long forgotten.

Close-cropped, skeletal, hirsute,

all animation distilled into

his flickering, light-reactor

rimless spectacles. Enviably detached

from afternoon-long lunch party

in the teak-diner sanctum behind him,

aviary of jabbered opinions ignored

or gestured aside with ever-louder guffaws.

If he looked up would he notice

two little girls with no words in common,

sit side by side, strangership dissolved

in a shared pack of chip potatoes?

Or wonder if they might be sisters,

whose same brown, beady riveting eyes

and sticky fingers scour every inch and corner

where they happen to be this hot, sea-struck day?

Would he spot that silver-quiffed old gent left

by his burnished 50-something daughter

with a pick-me-up glass of white,

watch him cajole those heedless little darlings

with smiling, half-articulated warnings

that sound like final priestly blessings?