Factory Settings

I spilt coffee on the keyboard of my laptop.

The screen went blank and then a tiny message –

I am your hard drive: I am dying:

Good-bye.

I wept and raged. All those emails, essays,

yes, and poems, many less than brilliant, drowned

in a puddle of lukewarm cappuccino.

I called the computer doctor.

I expected he would suggest

assisted cremation: he lacks a laptop manner.

To my surprise he offered hope: he could take us back

he said, to a time before the spill.

No promises, but he might

restore the hard drive, fool it to imagine

that the cappuccino did not happen,

and give us all a second chance.

Some things would be lost, he said, or all,

if radical electronic lobotomy was required.

Then it would revert to when it left the factory womb

prior to entering the brutal world of commerce,

when Trump was just a tower,

when Fred was offered experimental therapy

for his cancer (he declined - in every sense),

when Ruby was still a happy mum,

before she backed her car over Josh,

when Max moved out,

before he took his life, before Tom and Annie

made bad decisions in their business.

Years ago I saw Kingsley Amis interviewed

on television, propping the bar of an English pub,

together with his current wife,

a friend, and a former lover.

The interviewer asked him –

were he able to live his life again –

would he do so differently?

Amis peered into his pot of ale.

“If I did,” he smiled slowly, looking up,

“it would not be my life,

would it?” holding his glass

so as not to spill it in his lap.