The Kiss

View from the hotel balcony 56 x 42 cm mixed media on paper

WANDERVÖGEL

A green alpine

river slipping slowly past

a poetry slam with panama hats, so many things

plunging: cigar smoke, palm shadows, the

highest of necklines, dancing

followed by a banquet with all the “trimmings,”

something allegedly Austrian

done to veal—a great flattening out

of meat, bread crumbs

its skin—dumplings dumped on plates

the size of man hole covers,

boats of sauce steaming on oceans of white cloth.

After the climb we reach a hut

where an iodine-stained chamber

maid blows on our blisters

with the delicate hesitation of an April wind.

In the higher altitudes cows are still fed

thick salads of purest lucerne. It’s an economic

thing and magical properties and protein

says the guide, or History’s pain (plan), or something

because travel is educational. It might be obscure,

it might be incomprehensible, but you get a suntan

& free cocktail once a day. If you change that channel

who will ever fathom

the hay stack and the panama hat leaning

against it or soft trumpet call of tropical  

nights under clusters of alpine stars, the disbelieving river

as seen from these equatorial heights?