Old Family Business (Poetry)

How I wish I had known them
Their small café lives
The scrape of the chair legs
The clatter of knives
The banter of waiters
The sharing of quirks
What some customer said
How the cranky till works

I heard bits of stories
When old relatives came
And they talked of the past
And dropped in the odd name
And that’s how I learnt
Of the Skylark café
And one sad reason why
It’s remembered today

Later on in some pad
I briefly took note
But the details were few
Time misplaced what I wrote
Yet some of it stuck
In the bloodline we share
I’ll invent all the rest
Half-believe I was there