High in an Alpine Café 

by Tom Pickard

A small isolated café with a large empty car park
overlooks a range of moorland tops that drop
into a lush valley.  Sausage rolls, pork pies,
and Cornish pastries pile up on the counter.

A gust of wind launches a coke can from the rutted asphalt
as though it were a runway.

He joined the party because the armbands
matched the label and anger inside his angora suit.
But he still can’t tell if he’s living inside of an idiot
or if an idiot is living inside of him.

And can’t remember when Casper David Friedrich
and sausage rolls became linked
or see a landscape without one sweating in the foreground,
center left of frame.