Calling Pluto
By Karen Smith
After dark I call you up,
just to hear the weather report,
that the nights are drawing in now,
and how much you paid
for your latest pair of trousers.
You’ll tell me the one about
PLUTO, the giant pipeline rolling out
under the Channel on a steel drum,
how it kept the tanks fed
for our boys on the continent,
how the ice cream hut along the bay
was really a pump in disguise,
like those Ruperts that kept the Führer
guessing. And the Kamikaze who’d blaze
unswerving to the end, the enemy
you couldn’t help but admire. And I’ll
sing you American Pie again,
like that last night in the hospital,
however many times you try to die.
