Tag: Travel

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Snapshot from Berlin

Is that a boy or a girl
she’s flirting across
the table with, sharing

a plate and pix on a phone?
Why do I care? He has
long hair but seems slight

from behind. She clearly
cares for him without
caring if he’s a man.

Maybe he’s not. At this
angle I can’t see if there
is more hair on his face

than a woman would
allow herself. When they
leave, they share the bill.

***
The third day in Berlin, deep in the throes of jet lag with all the good and bad that entails, I stumbled onto a wonderful little Kneipe on the Oranienburger Str, Meilenstein. I sat down on the short leg of the bar with a view on everything and read. Jotted down this poem, plus one in German (in the holding zone for the moment). Drank too much Riesling. The next day was a total waste.  In Truth Serum.

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Ars poetica

We went to spot a trogon and I began to hum,
picking paces down a path greater than their sum.

Milky lime, the river, sometimes smoky jade;
in the brush, bromeliads; red orchids in the shade.

Cawing to the trogon as if we knew his sound,
we surely drove him farther in the dim background

where flashes off the river flitted with the breeze
and likenesses of birds flocked behind the trees.

At length we reached the ambit of a murmur
first confused. From hush there rose up whispers, firmer

round each bend, until we knew a roaring
falls could best explain the din, though its pouring

as it filled the pool came to form a quiet cove,
a hollowed cell recessed within the tangle of the grove.

I looked up through the rainbow spray where
my creature should have been, emerald scarlet in the air,

thoughts of ruby green. The water’s plunge made the bluff
beside it soar, but no bird perched up in that rough.

Mine remained the rarest bird, one that’s never flown.
The echo of his dearth is for my ears alone.

***
In Pastis.