Visitor

In a flash, but not a bang, with a bright

red and yellow light, a small alien

appeared in a living room in Gloucester,

(Number Eight Bourneville Road) at ten thirty

in the morning, while the family were out.

The room had one settee, two nice armchairs,

a forty two inch TV, a coffee

table, a small stereo that sounded

louder than it looked, a real fireplace,

three pictures on magnolia painted

walls, and a thick, cosy, off-white carpet.

The alien stood only four feet tall

in oily boots and a shabby squadron

uniform. He was off course. Tired, he trudged

to the window to see outside. He saw

a small, neat lawn with flowery borders,

an empty tarmac driveway, a quiet

street of light-bricked houses with similar

lawns and a few parked cars. He recognised

some of these things from previous missions,

some from his studies, but not quite like this.

This was much more… quiet. Even boring.

He turned back to the room and looked around.

He recognised it as a middle income,

fairly standard human dwelling. He knew

his way around such places, in theory;

what he needed now was a power point

so that he could make contact with his ship.

Scanning the lower sections of the walls

he walked slowly around the room until

he found two small white sockets underneath

the TV. He crouched down and pulled a plug

from one of them. He fished through his pockets

and retrieved a small black device: adding

an adaptor selected from his belt,

he pushed it into the earthling socket.

It lit up, and he stood. With time to kill

he wandered into the dining room, where

he found nothing of interest, and came back,

looking again around the boring front

room. Earth culture in peacetime, the western

sector. He pulled a book from his jacket,

perched on the edge of the sofa, reading,

until the little device flashed and beeped.

Jumping up, jabbing numbers into it,

he pocketed it and stood straight and tall

in the middle of the room. A white light

appeared around him and he disappeared,

as suddenly as he came, in a flash.

A version of this poem was first published

in Runcible Spoon in September 2018