Wonderful, all of them, Max: wise, witty, succinct, alive, hunger-making,
singularly life-surveying.
Thanks!
Judy
2009/11/10 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> Having recently concocted a verse snap called 'Immortality' about my
> breakfast
> banana, I have now made it no.12, last in a series of breakfast snaps,
> thus:
>
> Breakfast
>
> 1. Conversation at Breakfast
>
> while tongue-tied from sleep,
> need not be attempted, whether
> with strangers, colleagues or friends.
>
> Family will excuse taciturnity,
> having learned to distinguish it
> from later-hour sullenness.
>
> Over mother's cooked breakfast,
> a son at fourteen or so must
> resist the paterfamilias.
>
> The morning paper offers grounds:
> those dumb politicians!
> defend them, father, at your peril.
>
> The lad’s sarcasm sours breakfast,
> invites expulsion. Eat alone, son,
> abuse the morning paper only.
>
> 2. Breakfast in Bed
>
> First Mother’s Day, then Father’s Day,
> gradual improvements on the tray,
> till their thanks become sincere.
>
> Then with partners, spouses, mornings
> postcoital, punctuated
> by reconstituting petting.
>
> Later more like substituting,
> if tea and toast and marmalade
> can be erotic. For planning outings.
>
> 3. Muesli (1963)
>
> Fresh from New Zealand, where Weetbix was
> the breakfast for rugby players,
>
> I warmed to Scotland. A penny more,
> the milkman would leave not just milk,
>
> but full cream Jersey milk. Pour it
> sparingly on the muesli – that too
>
> is new – so dry I thought it had
> to soak overnight – now I felt
>
> so northern, European, Swiss!
>
> 4. Porridge in Former Times
>
> Poor students in Scotland, when
> their landlady’s oatmeal ran out,
> walked home to the family smallholding,
>
> shouldered their refilled meal-bags,
> trudged stooping back to their studies,
> seriously worth their oats.
>
> 5. A Week in Ireland (1987)
>
> From B&B to B&B six times,
> six Irish breakfasts: fried eggs and bacon.
>
> Stagger to the car ferry, sated
> with landscape, soft voices, eggs, bacon.
>
> 6. The End of Milk
>
> Full cream milk went out.
> Now to be in line with the fit ones,
> one must fill the fridge only with
> reduced fat, lite,
> skinny, trim, low-cal -
> scarcely milk but white.
>
> 7. Beach Breakfast
>
> Complacencies of the peignoir -
> for those who have peignoirs.
>
> Better bare-chested, bare-legged,
> with early orange juice and toast,
> on a sundeck facing east
>
> at some out-of-the-way Kiwi
> or Aussie beach with a name like
> Omokoroa, Merimubula,
> Kaikoura or Indented Head.
>
> Up comes the sun to dazzle
> and be worshipped,
> the tide’s up to suit whatever
> watersport fancy chooses.
>
> Breakfast is downed on foot,
> heading for the sacred strand.
>
> 8. Corporate Breakfast
>
> Sullen reluctant conscripts –
> nevertheless, name-tagged all,
> we file past the bains-maries,
>
> sit with strangers, force food in,
> remarks out, hearken to the
> ‘Inspirational Guest’,
>
> speak out as required about
> oneself, and slink off,
> networked out.
>
>
> 9. Hotel Breakfast in Tel Aviv
> [from M.Gawenda, 'Rocky and Gawenda', p.270]
>
> Pickled herring, schmaltz herring,
> olives, pickled turnips, pickled
> cucumbers, boiled eggs,
> hummus and tahina.
>
> 10. Wedding Breakfasts
>
> occur at any time of the day.
> Go through the ceremony fasting,
> as if starving is part of the protocol;
> straight after that, the feasting.
> The licence, and then the license.
>
> 11. Breakfast in the Air
>
> Ten long hours over the dark Pacific –
> it comes as a relief, an airline breakfast,
> though packaged, stored, now perched
> near your chin on a narrow tray.
>
> Land then at Auckland, queue for the flight
> to take you home to Melbourne,
> settle into your cramped corner,
> and get brought – an airline breakfast.
>
> 12. Immortality
>
> Peeling my breakfast banana,
> dicing it, sprinkling muesli on it,
> I think of old Bernard Levin,
>
> Times columnist, insisting how
> those fibres between peel and banana
> he always removed, they were poisonous.
>
> So celebrated in his time,
> Levin the columnist, how gone now!
> oblivion! I bring him back,
>
> each morning, discarding those strips,
> naming to myself his name,
> bestowing on it continued life!
>
> Reader, are you with me? I feel myself
> quietly fading. Kindly commit me
> so to memory – Max is my name.
>
> You could send me your name to say
> over quietly at breakfast,
> reciprocal immortality.
>
>
>
> Doncaster, Victoria
> Wednesday 11 November 2009
> Max Richards
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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