The fridge sits purring happily <br />in the corner of my kitchen, <br />well-behaved, domesticated, <br />house-trained even. <br />Once a week I give it milk and food <br />and clean the mouldy stuff <br />from its bottom box. <br />Open the door, a lightbulb comes on <br />as if a cartoon character is thinking... <br /> <br />all night long the fridge is dreaming <br />vague folk-memories <br />of its ancestors roaming wild <br />on the plains of the Serengeti - <br />roaring, not purring, <br />fridges to be feared - <br />or their temperate Northern cousins, <br />lurking in pine woods, <br />putting the wind up the Picts <br />like a large white oblong yeti. <br /> <br />Perhaps these days are not yet over. <br />There must be some still in the wild: <br />I saw one on Tuesday morning, <br />lying on its back in the wide grass verge <br />on the Ludlow bypass, <br />a roadkill fridge to add to the countless <br />badgers, foxes, cats and rabbits <br />littering that highway of death. <br /> <br />From where I read, if I stretch a bit, <br />I can see my fridge, sitting thinking. <br />How long will it be satisfied <br />with just a pint a week <br />and the odd tray of sausages? <br />Will it one day pull me in, <br />a giant Venus fly-trap, <br />and purr no more, but belch and roar <br />as, smashing through the veneer <br />of generations of fridges <br />tamed, dulled, zombified, <br />my fridge responds with all its pump <br />to the call of the wild? <br /> <br />I sit and watch it, stretching a bit. <br />It sits in the corner, quietly dreaming, <br />contented, <br />for now.<br /><br />Wild Bill Balding<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/domesticated-appliance/
