Pub people watching

 

(Monday 16th March 2020)



He chuckles
or clears his throat.
Maybe he is suppressing
a tickle or a giggle.

To cough now
makes one a pariah.

To be pink
from exertion
marks you suspect.

Though he probably want us to ask
what is funny
wants to interact
in this social distancing.

We (me and the man who was here first)
bald, smiley, gets two pints at a time.
We have talked of beers and towpaths
of school and these times.

I have known him ten minutes
but we are connected by these things
and the compulsion to share them.
And in this sharing have become a unit.

I am a personal space guardian,
a claustrophobe
quite content with this two metre rule,
government approved.

The bald guy has a surprise of glasses on
and is checking his phone
for betting odds? messages from lovers? an ill parent?

I don’t know because we are not a true unit
just a fleeting one
but one with sparkle and openness.

 

 

Sarah Dixon
Illustration: Atlanta Wiggs


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