Storks with Poulets, Peanuts with Pineau
“Consciousness of reality is itself a way of being in the world.”
Being and Time
They sail sphinx-like beyond the house, spread out
White threads plowing Charente’s Atlantic path
While imperious Blanche and good Grise strut clucking
Gastronomy upon the bugged-up lawn.
Darling, were this a wine tasting stranger,
Goobers merely nubile hooters, we might
Say our imaginations’ noble game, well
Thrice removed, is delicately real, pure of mind.
Yet time what it is, our sagging skin, we think
There is more there. And this spring breeze reminds
Us we may play both heaven and earth like
Feathered fools living in a world (of real being there).
The air is soft and tickles down the neck.
This wine fortifies a young imagination.
The Water in Our Glasses Moved
The water in our glasses moved as did the wine
(Both passed over our table at the time)
While having apéro, say 18:40
When the house shook as though next door a lorry
Gone by took out Émile’s barn in quainter
Dordogne. We sat waiting for some fainter
Tone, but nothing else came—fortunately
No ruin since too far away (ninety three
Miles by frank robin) was epicenter: La Laigne
Had become a strewn-block ghost town, domain
Exposed, church steeple thus toppled, debris
Stoned down on people a peeled catastrophe.
But then our water stilled in our glasses where
Beside the wine on the table we drank with poor care.