Soundtrack to the Frost Level

Relief of the midwinter,

sun binary scattered

vascular malformations

on the snow in relief.

I see you out there now,

even though you're also

somewhere squinting

in the same sun 6 hours later

in German Switzerland

where you've never been

but you're there still

as I trace my fingers

across the van's tinted

windows eating Lindt

for lunch, you can't

eat raclette alone.

Switzerland, the Last

Homely House where

rösti won't kill you

even in the middle of summer

but two days by the pool

almost did, thinking I

could be god without

need, skipping from

one minute to the next,

thinking actually spiriting

you out there would be 

impossible, that not

happening now is

won't happening, never,

that the fool's errand is

stretching for peak life

that if it could just be

located in the past

it could be relocated to

the present and so

the wine kept spilling.

I looked down at the

town below and misremembered

the idea I had of us

turning bowed and bent

and bedraggled, instead I 

looked at the eternal Gilles, 

eternal swimming trunks

rolling cigarettes in the 

ambient lightless 

rolling hills of his own

sunset, I knew him for

three days at best and

I said I want that

I want to live like this

in a place where visitors

think cheese won't kill

you and make grim jokes

about where is this Nazi 

gold then, can I cosplay

the eternal European

only a navy bodywarmer

apart from Davos, someone

who calls their kid Luca

and whose team will comfortably

be in the last 8 every other

World Cup who probably

shrugged their way to

middle management at Siemens - 

Gilles is no longer with us

and I might try and come

back from the deep end

I went off. I think there's some

point to this, I'm staring

at the London Plane

blocking the sledging hill

I keep adding to hoping it will

snow again, hoping it will be you

who takes me to Switzerland

to search for your ancestors 

wary of skis, preferring to 

play out their song on cowbells, 

who made a meal of your surname

but were never there.