Max this is more like an anthology than a snap !!!
Cheers P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 10 November 2009 23:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snaps: breakfasts
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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