Seamus Heaney At The Pier Café



Seamus Heaney posts his grandson
into a high chair, and takes a seat
in the booth opposite me.
I know it’s Seamus by his twinkling.

The waitress delivers a brace of spaghetti dinners
and the Heaneys take up their forks and dig in.
They eat in contented masculine silence.

The boy is keen but not adept.
Blonde fat curls gather at the chair’s foot
as if this were the barber’s
on the occasion of the child’s first haircut.

Seamus beams at his grandson
and settles his gaze out to sea.

Juliet Antill

If you have any comments on this poem,  Juliet Antill would be pleased to hear from you.