Live Encounters Poetry & Writing September 2024
he and she, prose poem by Stephen House.
he and she
he and she like to go on excursions along the coast / they both enjoy
photography and nature / we’ve seen them several times on a path
we take by the sea / she likes to stop and talk about whales they
have photographed and birds and the weather / he prefers to nod
and say hi and quickly keep going / if she has stopped to chat to us
he waits up the track a little way looking back to her and checking
his phone and making a clicking noise with his tongue that is loud
enough for us to hear / we don’t encourage her conversations due
to his tongue clicks but we respond to the topics she raises related
to their walks / he likes to bring sandwiches and a thermos of tea
for lunch while she prefers to go to the pub in the nearby town and
have a counter meal and a few beers and talk to other people having
lunch / we worked that out by watching and discussion and feel our
take on their lunch is fairly accurate / he likes to avoid the cafes in
the town pre and post their coastal walk but she likes to have a long
black coffee in a café / i know that as she shared the information
with me and extended on it when she discovered i like long blacks
too and that we often go to a café before our hike / we haven’t seen
he and she that many times but we know a lot about them because
we are observant and enjoy working out the stories of other human
beings / we believe that he and she get on well together and enjoy
the seaside walks they share just as we do / but we both agree they
are quite different in personality and taste / each time we see he
and she we discover more about them / the other day after our
walk we had lunch at the pub / she was in there / he wasn’t / she
spoke to us as she was leaving / told us they were about to go for
a walk / when she left i looked out the pub door and down the road /
he was standing on the corner smiling as he watched her walking
towards him / he wasn’t phone-checking or tongue-clicking / when
she reached him they hugged and then walked towards the coastal
track / together //
© Stephen House
Stephen House has won awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s been commissioned often, with 20 plays produced, many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts to Canada and Ireland, and an Asialink residency to India. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His poetry is published often. He’s performed his acclaimed monologues, ‘Appalling Behaviour’, ‘Almost Face to Face’ and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ widely. His play, ‘Johnny Chico’ ran in Spain for 4 years.
Lovely insight about ‘Togetherness’