“Lyra and her daemon
Moved through the darkening hall,
Taking care to keep to one side,
Out of sight of the kitchen.”
And so begins Book One,
The Golden Compass of His Dark Materials ,
Beginning on these grounds of Oxford —
Where the author resides—
The university,
Where Lyra ran amok with her daemon—
One day just a renegade orphan,
The next a navigator of high seas,
A bear-riding soldier
And a diplomat of dimensions
Traipsing through time and space
With her shape-shifter at her side,
One day a cat, the next a ferret—
Not unlike that man we met on the street
With a cat on a leash and photos of their travels,
The cat on dashboards and motorbikes,
Beaches and highways,
More of a dog than a cat
In his thrill-seeking wanderlust
Beyond Meow Mix and catnaps.
Now at Oxford U,
A word not far off
From the whimsy of mind’s eyes,
With the dodo bird sculptures,
And Gemini, and griffins, and horse-drawn carriages,
And heads of dead scholars
Like convicts on London Bridge ,
It’s as though I stepped into the pages
Of a series I adore,
Of angels and witches and original sin,
Human experiments and parallel dimensions,
All from the mind of Sir Philip Pullman,
A true visionary of the mind’s eye
Of worlds among worlds.
Little wonder C.S. Lewis attended here,
Where his nickname was Dodo—
Hence the Dodo of Wonderland—
And the rabbit the color
Of an old man’s beard—
Alice ’s father, specifically.
There is something about this place—
Oxford University —
That spurns the imaginations of those
Who wield a pen that is mightier than the sword.
They hail from this campus like Neverland alumni,
Making names for themselves in the worlds they create;
“‘And then what?’ said her daemon sleepily.
‘Build what?’
‘The Republic of Heaven ,’ said Lyra.”
In the many Italian restaurants
I have dined at these past two weeks,
I have learned my share of Italian words—
Il pesce, antipasto, salmone, birra—
Which means beer in both Italian and Arabic!—
And then there’s pudding—
Originally the Latin word botellus,
Meaning “small sausage,”
A key ingredient in medieval Europe .
Pudding is a broad term for the British,
For it applies to any dessert,
Be it brownies, cheesecake,
Or my favorite: ice cream.
Speaking of which:
~*Tartufo Classico*~
Not only is it the cutest name for a dessert
Ever to be thought up and committed to menu,
It’s also the most delicious
Singular scoop of ice cream I have ever had—
And that’s saying a lot,
For ice cream is my essential basic food group.
My dessert arrives—
Brought in by an accented waiter who says
I resemble Jennifer Lopez
And I’m sitting next to Elvis Presley—
And it’s only one scoop on a large round plate—
Brits seem to favor small desserts
With plates double their size—
But one spoonful transports me to
Cream-filled chocolate-hazelnut gelato bliss,
Covered with crushed caramelized hazelnuts
And sprinkled with cocoa powder—
Is this the Republic of Heaven that Lyra spoke of?
We have come full circle
To arrive back in London ,
Where storm clouds hold vigil—
“For there’s no place like London ,
There’s no place like London —
There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And their morals aren’t worth what a pig can spit
And it goes by the name of London !”
That’s Sweeney Todd’s take on it;
For me it’s the world of
Great musical theatre,
Gardens of Remembrance,
Museums of centuries past
And very scary traffic.
Not to mention salons
With names like Pleasant Barbers—
Sweeney Todd being one of them.
Storm clouds hold vigil over London
Like belligerent troops—
Like the rally taking place
On some side of the city
Against Israel and their exploits—
Why am I missing all the action,
Cooped up in this hotel room
With only the television
To connect me to worldly happenings?
But then again, I’ve seen so much already—
Saint Augustine ’s gardens and Churchwell Path,
Orwell’s Ministry of Truth,
Cabarets of words and lit,
Aztec ruins and busts of Ramses,
Venetian masks and the Rosetta Stone,
Its inscriptions on apparel and accessories—
All in the city where London Bridge falls down.
There’s time in the world to rail and rally
Politics and government antics;
But for now, our last day of the tour,
This ice cream scoop with the cute name
Brought to me in the hotel restaurant
By a waiter who calls me Jennifer Lopez
Will be the extent of my nightly shenanigans.
Tomorrow’s another day—
The last day—
And I welcome bedtime in this hotel
Over bedtime in any hostel,
And tomorrow we enter the time warp again,
The time change six hours back in time,
On a plane for eight hours—
That’s four-hundred and eighty minutes
Of ear-popping altitude,
Sleeping with knees drawn up
And a pillow on the shoulder of my fellow vagabond—
We’ve come full circle
And go back to where we started.
Latitude? Longitude?
Our number is 360.
Now that’s wanderlust!