Stopover at The Hog’s Head

It has been, as they say, a while.

Elbows on grain of pine, with English pints we settle

to an earnest unfolding: the maps of our lives.

From a plateau either side of sixty,

we triangulate scarce-remembered reference points.

Draw comfort from the parallels.

School geography – “Never write a word

across a line”. Now I follow contours where bitumen

seals the cracks of least resistance.

A door swings open, slamming closed;

the candle gutters. Wax spots stick to varnish, turning hard,

and my pig’s cheek is wolfed without remark.

Our empty plates are gathered up:

time to pay and go. Pauses signpost then uncharted shores

where old age crumbles into sea. 

But anecdote is not data;

you (as I would) point to local redbrick history.

It says that as things have been they do not remain.

vi.2016