The Window Seat

© The Ugly Bread Bakery www.uglybreadbakery.co.uk

We bought antipasto
and sat in an upstairs window
looking down Pelham Street
from where we could see the trams,
great bendy snakes,
disgorging shoppers and workers and tourists and students
and people like us
who had just come to watch.

Watchers, we noted, are the ones
who dismount less certain,
step out, step away, pause,
adjust a shoulder bag,
pull on a hat,
scan the street in every direction for possibilities,
perhaps weighing
opportunity, wondering,

wandering the streets
like pilgrims beckoned forward
by a promise of who knows what
in the urban churn?
Focused, alert, open 
to see beneath the facade of buildings and people,
awake to the hope-starved droop
or the energy of manic search.

Searching not as the shopper
compulsively seeks the next bargain, 
nor as the doorstep dweller
questions the intent on a face,
but reading lives' stories,
hearing hearts' melodies played without self-consciousness
tuneful, dissonant, unique 
on the city's stage today.

© Janet Henderson October 2015
  
The location which inspired this poem is the Ugly Bread Bakery in Hockley, Nottingham where you can relax in an upper window enjoying the scenes below and indulging in the most delicious food! 'People watching or crowd watching is the act of observing people and their interactions, usually without their knowledge. It involves picking up on  idiosyncrasies to try to guess at another person's story. This includes speech in action, relationship interactions, body language, expressions, clothing and activities…..[for many] it is a subconscious activity they take part in every day without even realising.' Wikipedia.