Tag Archives: german

Day 13 — a song of noble rot + ice

Based on a true story (& abetted by my long abiding love for sweet dessert wine). Did it stem from this event? I can’t say. But it’s nice to acknowledge one of the fungi kingdom’s less glamorous members. 

The Factoid comes from an episode of Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course (first screened in 2003) & which has stuck with me to this day. One day …

[Disclaimer: This poem was written on the correct day (Monday) but was unable to get it online owing to online courses, meetings, & other exhaustions.]

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[please click to enlarge image]

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Day 14 Factoid – Some Crazy Germans Make Wine From Ice

Eiswein

Take good grapes
Free of rot
Do not pick them

Wait till winter
Till they all freeze
Then quick as you can

Get everyone out
With frozen fingers
Grab them all at once

Crush. Ferment. Drink.
Get very silly. (Hic.)
On that very sweet juice.

Something I’ve never tried
But would like to
(The getting silly mainly)

[Happy to let someone else do the rest]

Day 29 – silence (& smiles)

29 cancerous_by_psion005_dc2hbl.jpg

Worked on a poem about the multiple Goldilocks zones that our world occupies, a long conceived concept, but it’s more complicated than anticipated, so this is a Plan B pome.

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Scans

Spent several hours sitting
next to a subdued stranger
often in stilted silence

Trying not to talk about
the hot topic of the day
even though it’s all
that occupies us

Trying extremely hard
not to compare contexts:
lives alone, never married
only an aged mother
in rapid decline
also living alone nearby
father mercifully taken
down swiftly by two
strokes in succession

Trying not to project
forward into my
unfriendly future

& failing miserable

 

 

BONUS POEM: April 29, 2018

A quiet moment of cross-cultural communication.

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Homemade

many things
have thrilled me
this past month
but perhaps
nothing so much
as this breakfast
when I pointed
at the apricot jam
& said in my best
Australian German
“hausgemacht?
sehr gut”

the “ja” & brief
blossom of a smile
to the otherwise
surly waiter’s face
was like a bee
abseiling my spine

29b german jam.jpg