Passages in the Bad-Hotel Zum Hirsh

He compels his recalcitrant eyes

toward the book until they escape

into the seventeenth century

wildwood landscape hanging

on the wall sealed in a frame

of gold gilt almost black.

No other persons sit

on chairs’ red stripes, nor

on those with carved

wood backs

and poking broken springs.

No oxygen in the room

where morning light pours

in with leftover coffee, jam rolls

and hot boiled eggs. Same menu

every morning for this guest

who comes late like bad news.

He wanders out into

the fairy-tale Black Forest

above Baden-Baden.

Meanders through a dark glen

and finds the tree

of black bark and its secret

door with the flaming feather

above it. The door opens

into a magic room where a table’s been

set with hot cocoa to drink before

he passes through another door on the other side.

Fumbling his way

he walks out jangled by incandescence,

closes the book,

heaves a breath fluttering like a feather

from a down-bed dream. The dreamer

in him scrapes dregs of sweetness

with his eyes, late, centuries late.

Milltown Maltbay, Cookery School

Even her diction, voluptuous with waves of Irish

and soft like the sea we could watch from the window,

conveyed herself as the Captain of Her Kitchen. Rita,

in a crisp white cap and gleaming butcher’s apron slit

a pocket in the breast, a perfect pouch ready to stuff.

The pounded floured chicken breast hung from her pink

fingers with poise, a dangling creature. Listen,

I’m a fumble fingers when it comes to food. I’d anticipated,

“have some potatoes with your potatoes”-- cooking class in Ireland--

Now Rita insisted my fingers whip, chop and knead,

amid the bank of ovens and around the burners melting butter,

boiling eggs, frying bacon. I learned to rice potatoes. Oh yes,

there were potatoes, so rich they made me swoon.

Have I mentioned Marguerite? Called herself

the kitchen slave, buoyant, measuring pinhead

oatmeal and bicarbonate of soda, celery, and cream.

Fetching wooden spoons, testing oven temps,

plucking rosemary and thyme, slivering lemon for zest

and whisking away trays to wash while whispering

much needed motherly comfort in my ear.

My own late mother started me off with lessons

drenched in don’ts, a veritable kitchen goose-egg

who tossed off cold canned peas and made a mess

of chopped beef on her one burner, a world

and decades ago. I daydream mother, stuffed

with curiosity, sniffing ‘round Rita’s domain,

lugging suitcases of recipes, dressing herself up

to play Rita’s chummy intimate,

as the connoisseur of taste.

Fourth Day at the Literary Seminar

Silly white plaster clouds

with scalloped baby blue borders

are superimposed on an arching

ceiling above an assembly

of teeth-chattering poets ducking

air conditioners in Key West’s

San Carlos auditorium.

Three bards on stage nestle

In pink overstuffed

chairs, banter back and forth,

practically chant hymns

about what Art is supposed

to do when it says

what can’t be said, cast words

out in arcs like flies on fishing lines,

ask which of a million chances

will I hook? Say, they never know

what the end will be as they scrummage

“to build a bridge,

make a poem, find mystery

and magic and music.”

All the while a fellow in a gray shirt

sitting two rows forward

does needlework, some

in the audience nod, others nod off.

Finally the weariest presenter

says “No line should sleep.” He says,

“Writing a poem is like stepping into a

canoe with a stranger.” From the stage,

across a sea of heads, he looks down,

looks at me. His blue eyes

give me the high-sign.

I clutch my pen like an oar (I clutch my oar like a pen)