Remember the day
we nearly missed Geneva?

After many years
perfecting our swing
and signing the right papers

we expired just in time
for the next big ‘chapter’
of our lives

and just as a new valley opens
before us, just after the young violinist
boards the carriage, he opens his score.

There was either an avalanche
or there wasn’t, the ideas
piled up behind the lodge

but we’d just passed Salzburg,
the version that
never changed. Still,

the angel had our back,
to have come into the season
too early, or too late

to have blundered into the trap
laid a moment ago

but not earlier, not later,

that sudden jolt
into wakefulness

brought four fifths regret
and one fifth pride.

All you can say
you were lucky, not chosen

nor exceptional, the inheritance
that you craved
was too much

for the time you had left
to spend it

in countries you wanted to see
wiped from the map
their border guards gone
just as you disembarked the train.

The day the machine broke down
we were on time
and it gave us back our life.