At the Rottnest Island hotel and beer-garden

At the Rottnest Island hotel and beer-garden

It’s not really like Rosalie’s Good Eats Café,
There’s sorrows and blunders and strife
But there’s other things too, for this funny old pub
Has at least its full share of true life.

There’s a middle-aged window and her teenage son,
He bored, he’d like girls now or beer
Even some friends his own age would be nice
He wishes his mother weren’t here.

His mother can sense it, but what can she do?
She can’t reach him, although she can try.
(She painted a scene at the light-house at dawn.
He’ll look at it one day and cry).

The bespectacled lawyer drinking his beer
Lost the love of his life months ago.
He’s surprised he’s not shaken it off with a laugh,
He’s surprised that the healing’s so slow.

Now the girl that he met while sailing today
Is right here at the hotel
He’s too shy and uptight when looking at her
To see that she wants him as well.

She’s not wearing much as she sits on the stool
And she looks at his friend with a smile
He still isn’t getting it yet, the poor fool,
But maybe he will in a while.

There’s a man and a woman sitting outside
With their toes in the cool silver sands.
They met here twenty-five years ago.
They’re holding each other’s hands.

They know each other’s being with a new
Sense of love and surprise
And the moon, with its splendid sense of cliché
Reflects as a light in their eyes.



They kiss and they whisper, trying to express
The things at the limits of speech.
In the water’s last shallows the little top-shells
Tinkle and wash on the beach.



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