Scafell Pike was a few miles distant.
Not visible.
But this was England’s highest point.
“A molehill!” he said, while we sat
laughing at each other from our tatty
old sleeping bags.
You should have met my Swedish
friend, a cabinet maker
resident somewhere in Switzerland,
accustomed to real
mountains and the exuberant air.
We got on like the proverbial house,
cooling it down with his wit, my
natural reserve, but we had
Abba and Borg and now the Buddha
in common – what was there not to like?
“But who is this Borg?” he said.
“Didn’t you know? Back home we say ‘Bory’.”
Really? Well I thought that wouldn’t do, shocked
out of my anglo-centric world.
But I trusted my sudden blond friend,
this infectious alpine Swede.
“And watch out for the snails!” he said, leading
us to the huge white tent.
Yes, weren’t they lives, too? just
not with our potential
to love and to care – though how often do we choose?
“Maybe on a clear day?” I said, pausing
by the entrance, pointing towards
where Scafell Pike might be.
He laughed. “Not in a billion years!” he said,
with his arresting smile
Marlene Dietrich photograph (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Pat 1.0
A girl from the future, she’d said,
a real chic-chic-whirr!
Pat was her name, dark high heels and
clinging pink dress, a row of
little red buttons before me
which (the paperwork said), would ‘lead
to other worlds’.
So I pressed the bottom button, a thirty
second hologram projected from her eye,
a précis
from my time to hers: “My god!”
I said, all-a-gaga,
“she really makes President?”
Button two appealed to my
sense of history. “I can be
any figure you like,” she giggled. So
I thought of Genghis Khan and
recoiled, I mean
I fell to the ground—
the stench of his breath and
bloody blade! so real,
but even he had a human eye.
Button three was ‘anywhere, anytime’,
so there we were in a darkening
Berlin bar, surrounded by
art deco, lots of nods and smiles;
I felt the spirit keenly, the zeitgeist
over my shoulder, whispering: ‘seize
the moment, this
brief,
precious time’.
And then she stood and sang for me
like Piaf, posed
like Dietrich, sizzled
like Kitt, singing how old fashioned she was but
I just wasn’t a millionaire, although
“zat, darlink,” she purred, with a brush
of mink on my cheek, “vill be easily
fixed!”
I felt
a little like Faustus before
Helen of Troy, though
she was no Mephistopheles;
more legion, everything rolled into one app.
All this time her top
button had intrigued the most.
“Go on— pat it!” she said, smoking
cross legged.
“You see?” She kicked
off a heel, letting
down her futured hair.
“Yes,” she whispered, pulling me
close, “and I, my sweet,
am just the beta version.” I looked
briefly
down on Metropolis
from floor 159, so brave,
so new.
Some things, clearly,
would never change
Ciscography 