Waitresses: The Cozy Nest
 
The first time they went to The Haven, schoolboys,
they found The Cozy Nest, pumping espresso charms
over the smells of sea and sand. The waitress was Lola.
Big girl. They joshed and sniggered. They’d seen
their share of half-nude girls (in the barber’s shop mags)
so giggled now over Lola’s knockers. But she scared them.
When John tramped in a load of seaweed, she cleared it up,
but he left knowing that Lola had seen right through
to the garbage that was his soul.

Just starting college. The waitress that hot summer
was Tracy. They fell in love. Her Hollywood form
purred to their table, smiled and left its play of images,
the hovering breasts, the many various visualisations.
Inspired, they longed to rush on cream-white chargers
to her defence. Against anything. Against the bloke in the corner,
the seedy one, with the roll-ups and the little tash.

The year before graduation and another waitress.
Emily. The boys all had girl friends now, girls
who read Eliot and Germaine Greer, wrote essays.
And so, when Tommy turned the juke-box up,
full blast, for a laugh, and Emily cried,
‘Who highered that?’, they all thought, ‘Hmmph.
The word is raised, not highered, silly tart.’
Such gravitas, in the new relationships.
 
Robert Nisbet

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