Autistic woman in an Irish bar

A drink in the afternoon

in a bar overlooking the harbour.

Chittering locals and scraping chairs

on foot-flogged stone.

Human voices

(Wordsworth's still, sad music)

tugging her from her lonely orbit,

though in truth she is happier to circle unnoticed.

Her book coughs a polite rejoinder

and she re-enters its pages

content with soundtrack rather than script -

neither protagonist nor onlooker

nor entirely absent from the narrative -

apart and a part in the town's continuing story.

Grey skies and a rippling sea

hint at rain to come

while within the pages

night has already fallen on a faraway town

and a threatened reckoning is due.