A table for One

                                                                                    Table laid for one
 

Dear Reader,

I wrote today's poem when I was staying in Lyme Regis some years ago, and had gone out for supper to a restaurant near to our hotel.  As one does, we looked round to see who else was there, this was before the days of coronavirus and all its restrictions on outings.

In the next door table sat a woman on her own.  But I knew she wasn't happy, she searched in her handbag for a handkerchief and tears spotted her cheeks.  She ate her supper and drank a glass of wine but looked miserable nevertheless.  But when she left the restaurant I felt so guilty. Why hadn't I spoken to her, why hadn't Francis? She might have cheered up and told us her story.  Of course, perhaps she was used to being on her own,  had decided to reach out, to try a small adventure of eating in a restaurant solo, and then found it lonely and not to her taste.  I don't know, it could have been so many things but maybe if we had spoken to her she might have felt better.  And so might of I.

                                                                                           

 

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From Dorothy Wordsworth. 1802, Westmorland, April 29th

'A beautiful morning - the sun shone an all was pleasant....William lay, and I lay, in the trench under the fence - he with his eyes shut, and listening to the waterfalls and the birds. There was no one waterfall above another - it was a sound of waters in the air - the voice of the air.  William heard me breathing and rustling now and then, but we both lay still, and unseen by one another; the thought that it would be as sweet thus to lie so the in the grave, to hear the peaceful sounds of the earth, and just to know that our dear friends were near.

                                                                                          *

A Table for One

The woman sat alone
in a corner,
at a table for one.
She ate slowly
sipped from a wine glass.

I guess she was middle-aged
or a little older,
an ordinary woman
who seemed immensely sad.

She started talking to herself
her mouth making silent words,
took a handkerchief from her pocket
and wiped her eyes.

What was her story?
had she been in this hotel before
with a lover who had left her
did she come back to this place
to grieve each year?

I don't know her story
but she touched my heart.
I longed to cheer her,
speak to her but I said nothing.
I often think of her,
wish I had been braver.

                                                                              *

With very best wishes, Patricia