A Sense of Unending

“It makes you long for a summer afternoon when you can sit in somebody’s back garden with a glass of wine in front of you, and it just goes on forever.”
Frank Pike

Lunch and the afternoon were steadily waning
as the two of us sat and talked. The one remaining
waiter was laying tables for the evening trade. A
few drops were left in our bottle of Rueda.
Our second bottle. There was no hurry. Delicious
sunlight swooned down to us from Galicia’s
mote-frantic window, while the conversation
drifted or stalled according to the caprices
of Frank’s dementia. That was the situation
when Frank, who could still say things that were witty or clever,
spoke his dream of how the show might go on forever.
It didn’t. It couldn’t. Our bill paid, I escorted
the poor old fellow back to where he was quartered.

Christopher Reid’s most recent collection of poems is Toys / Tricks / Traps, 2023

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