Scene in a Seaside Restaurant (Poetry)

Lost in the folds, life has blurred its shape,
let go its hold and given in —
not gracefully but with a dull relief —
to the sag of skin, the weary-lidded gaze,
its once-quick sharpness gone,
merged into muffled voices like the hum of bees
soothing in their distance
while each figure waits — an age-hunched island
neighbouring the next —
the green-clothed tables a neat archipelago
where survivors swop old tales
and no one listens as they chew,
patient as the sea erodes the cliff,
their battered fish a challenge and the chore
of living nearly done.

Worn as a familiar shore,
their features blend — soft profiles mist and sink
into an ocean dotted grey with heads —
slow-swimmers bobbing, counting every stroke
and oblivious to everything but how
the effort tires them, makes the ticker race.

But it wasn’t always so — dim memory still digs
for snap-shot proof — Scarborough and Porthcawl —
the Forties — Fifties — limbs brown-sapling-strong
and willing then — wish they were there...
They like this old-style restaurant for its views —
the pier, the prom, this cold wet summer scene
a last-ditch refuge from the coming storm —
it takes them back... and back... and back...
to everywhere they’ve been.