Pie & Golf Poetry
Two kinds of poetry: Golf (Poetry in Motion) and Pie (Poetry in Pastry). Sometimes some other subject matters dances its way in, too.
Cinderella’s Pumpkin Pie
Last modified on 2008-11-24 19:21:36 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
Consistently friendly and untempermental,
Cinderella never asked for much.
She told me her life too often was filled
with flavorless spice
and not that honest pumpkin flavor
that only princes recognize.
So, she learned how to sweeten the pie
without masking the taste
of fields full of orange
and fall festivals held on old village greens.
The secret she told me is in the milk,
sweetened, condensed,
ready to go
into a filling
both intense and sweet –
yet never high in fat.
Two whole eggs, two yolks,
the least grainy filling,
silky smooth,
served best in a glass slipper.
“But, my dear,” I asked,
“with the pumpkin pureed for your pie,
how will you get to the ball?”
“I’d rather stay honest,” she said,
“and be who I am.
“Besides,” she continued,
“the pumpkin aroma will be quite enough,
to bring him my way,
and then I will serve up
ambrosia for him,
a dessert plate for me,
and always a slice left for you.”
Creeping Bentgrass L-93: A poem
Last modified on 2008-11-12 02:52:45 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
Creeping Bentgrass L-93: For golf greens in Zone 4
L-93 will regulate the thatch
And maximize the growth you seek today
Enhancing speed across the green to flag
Providing more consistent roll of balls
and dropping strokes from every card you play.
Your creeping bentgrass needs less care than you
might think: a mowing once or twice a day
and routine use of inhibition meant
to stop the flow of gibberellic blood
or acid, put in less poetic terms.
In just two years your newly seeded green
will keep its pledge, but you must do the same
and never lapse in taking care of thatch
and never fail in mowing, grooming, or
remembering the nitrogen, not once.
Your creeping bentgrass needs the best in fert-
ilizer, wetting agents, moistest soil.
Do not ignore hydrophobicity
when caring for your bentgrass putting green,
and it will care for you for years to come.
Yoga Retreat Golf Meditation
Last modified on 2008-11-01 21:24:49 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
“Focus,” he says, “on a faraway sound.”
Instructed well, I still listen instead
for the silence just beyond the sounds
of the Costa Rican rain forest:
the stream, the wind, the birds, the dogs.
I listen as always
for the perfect click
of the well-placed stroke
lofting a ball
somewhere yet
behind the silence that hovers
between the birds and the monkeys
and the rain forest sky.
Not far from here,
in the deep dark serenity
a billboard blocks out the pasture
strewn with perfectly lean
cattle — and shade.
I’m listening for silence
but seeing the billboard
promising beaches, promising golf.
Or promising sand traps and pain,
I’m not quite sure which,
and I have quite enough pain
already
in shoulders and spine and in knees.
I’m listening for silence
but drifting myself
into a turqouise-striped beach chair
striped canvas above me
an umbrella in my drink
that maybe is rum in a wild carved-out pineapple
or maybe straight rum in a souvenir glass.
You, of course, are there with me,
contented,
relaxed.
I’m listening for silence
but I’m swinging my club
seeing perfection
simplicity
ease.
I hope I remember
what my body can do
when I come out of the rain forest
and back to the lights
where I can listen for silence
behind the sounds
of the driving range at night.
Then maybe I’ll hear
the song that you’re humming
behind the silence that hovers
between the birds and the lizards
and the Florida sky.
My Map of Havana
Last modified on 2008-10-17 22:33:03 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
Not easily read
the compass rose pointing
to directions unknown
where I want to travel
with or without caffeine and chocolate
with or without your side-snaking dance steps
with or without your purple sedan
I already know
the taste of mojito
on my tongue before morning
I already know
how to sing in a language
that that does not need words
I already know
the alleyway music
that goes on without me
and maps a new route
that plays through my hands.
I wish you had been there.
I wish you had seen
the architects’ angels
that cast shadows
around me
and drew their own maps
on my brow and my soul.
As I look at my map now
the street music swelters
and fades into the fumes
and Ladas and Fiats
while tourists and families
ride on the bus tops
drive homemade bike rickshaws
line up at the bakeries
and dive from the rocks
into the water
that protects and divides them,
gives shape to the map.
Peeled Onion Dream Pie
Last modified on 2008-09-19 20:45:28 GMT. 1 comment. Top.
“Just peel the onion,” they say.
“Peel back the layers
and see what you find.”
I say “Nothing,” but I am wrong.
Nothing is just what I found
at the time,
but now I know it’s full of space,
and space of course is full of stars.
So we talk about observation,
seeing time move, and
wondering when
and how
simple viewing
moved its way
through the amygdala
to turn itself into critical thinking.
To make this pie,
I suggest you start with
just one large,
unfathomably sweet
Vidalia onion.
Peel it back
until you all you can see is
stars, motion,
and mathematics.
Opine to your heart’s desire.
Percolate.
Steep overnight.
Reflect, and finally
inject with just enough emotion
to give it that special zip.
Spread over a thick skin
of bread dough and minced onion.
Bake in a wood-fired adobe oven
in the dark heart of night
just north of Nogales
while you sing with coyotes
and breathe in the same stars
that you formerly
could not see inside the onion.
Serve in a paper bag.
Try to think your way out of it.
Lemonade Pie
Last modified on 2008-09-17 21:10:16 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
Didn’t get what I wanted, and you know what they said? Honey, when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. I always said, when life hands you a lemon, look for tequila and salt.
How to make Lemonade Pie:
Take all your disappointments, sorrows, and, grievances
Soak in tequila overnight
Wake up wanting something sweet and crunchy
Find it
Mash it up for the crust with real butter
And extra cinnamon
Distill the liquid ingredients
Until you have something you can use
Fold in some whole organic eggs and heat ever so slowly
In time it will thicken
In time it will jell
Pour into the crust
And then, baby,
All you need to do is
Chill
Poetry and Coffee (sorry, no pie)
Last modified on 2008-09-18 21:40:22 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
The Morning Guy claims not to listen to NPR, but he does seem to read Garrison Keillor’s website “The Writer’s Almanac” which astounds and confuses me. I do listen to NPR, but built up a sensitivity to Keillor’s voice over the years, until it has become a sound akin to fingernails on a blackboard. But that’s another story.
At any rate, I was surprised to find this poem in my in-box this morning, before I even went in to work. “Everyone must read poetry with their coffee,” he’d written on the attached sea-blue Post-It note. I’m not sure if that is meant to be a new rule — The Morning Guy has many of those — or just an observation.
Sadly for me, like the narrator of the poem, I no longer drink coffee. Or smoke. Or drink. Damn, sometimes life is hard. No wonder I look forward to those stormy days when Hurricane Rules Apply. I used to love a shot of 100-proof Hot Damn followed by a beer chaser. Oddly enough, I just don’t get the same kick from a cinnamon Altoid and an O’Doul’s.
And I do miss drinking coffee with my poetry. At least I’ll always have pie.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Literature in the 21st Century
by Ronald Wallace
Sometimes I wish I drank coffee
or smoked Marlboros, or maybe cigars—
yes, a hand-rolled Havana cigar
in its thick, manly wrapping,
the flash of the match between
worn matchbook and stained forefinger,
the cup of the palm at the tip,
the intake of air, and the slow and
luxuriant, potent and pleasurable
exhale. Shall we say also a glass
of claret? Or some sherry with its
dark star, the smoke blown into the bowl
of the glass, like fog on portentous
morning, the rich man-smell of gabardine
and wool, of money it its gold clip?
Sometimes I wish I had habits
a man wouldn’t kick, faults a good man could
be proud of. I’d be an expatriate from
myself, all ink-pen and paper in a Paris café
where the waiters were elegant and surly,
the women relaxed and extravagant
with their bobbed hair and bonbons, their
perfumed Galoises, their oysters and canapés,
and I’d be writing about war and old losses—
man things-and not where I am, in this
pristine and sensitive vessel, all
fizzy water, reticence, and care, all reduced
fat and purified air, behind my deprived
computer, where I can’t manage even
a decaf cap, a mild Tiparillo, a glass of
great-taste-less-filling light beer.
“Literature in the 21st Century” by Ronald Wallace from Long for This World: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission.
Slice Mulligan’s Lyrics
Last modified on 2008-09-15 17:37:51 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
“Golf Songs for the Everyday Golfer”
http://www.slicemulligan.com/lyrics.htm
Making Pie Crust
Last modified on 2008-09-17 21:41:56 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
You must not work the dough too much.
Fine flaky crust
requires a light touch.
I cut the shortening into the flour,
rocking the cutter as I go.
There was a time, though,
when I would grasp two knives
and cleave the ingredients,
both pressing them together
and slicing them apart.
When young, I did not remove my rings.
I don’t even wear them now.
Back then,
I liked the look of gemstones
dappled with bits of dough.
Grandmother would not have approved, though,
and even now,
I know she is watching me.
Not that grandmother taught me how to bake.
Oh, no.
If anything, she showed me that I
could be a real woman
and never cook a god damn thing.
But that’s another story.
She did, however, make a pie crust
that was so flaky
I could peel it apart
with my silver dessert fork,
and find a new horizon
in every translucent layer.
My grandfather was talented with pie, too.
No matter how many people
sat at his table,
he could cut a pie
so that everyone there
had a slice of equal size,
and he always had two.
Somewhere along the line
I learned to lay down waxed paper
instead of a pastry cloth.
I think that is a Nebraska trait.
And when I make my pie crust now,
I travel back there for a moment or two.
I visit the women at my welcoming church
who invited me, the young mother, to join them
in cookie packing one holiday weekend.
One after another, the women came in,
brushing the snow from their sensible boots,
dropping down bags of store-bought cookies,
and saying, “I really don’t have time to bake.”
I knew I was in the right place.
Long ago, for a rolling pin, I chose a wine bottle
that drew me in with its rich green glass.
Now I wield the wooden pin
that I have carried with me for years.
I wonder when the handles broke off?
I wonder why?
It hints of violence in the kitchen, doesn’t it?
I don’t recall any—at least not involving pie,
although …
I did once throw
a fairly hefty farm-grown watermelon
at my fairly hefty farm-grown husband.
But that’s another story.
Now for the best part:
The crust is elegantly thin,
and ready to be transferred to its vessel.
Sometimes I choose the glass pie plates that I bought
when my favorite bar went out of business
and sold off all its cookware.
I don’t believe I ever ate a pie there,
though I would, sometimes, sit at the bar and drink
Glenlivet scotch, and toast the memory
of my late great father-in-law.
My war with him was never open,
but I still think I won.
I’m here now, am I not?
We can only speculate on his whereabouts.
So, where were we?
Ah, the pie crust,
submissive in its pan.
My mother would have me
prick it with a fork,
but I say no.
I go another route,
more seductive, more sublime.
I pull out my crimper
and begin the ritual
of pressing the dough,
embossing the crust
with rosettes and with stars.
It’s a gentle motion of marking territory:
This
pie
crust
belongs
to
me.
Many times,
if I am making a single-crust pie,
this effort remains hidden,
like wearing your best undies
when you go out to play.
But sometimes…
sometimes
I’ll do a two-crust pie,
and then I get the pay-off:
The aahs.
The oohs.
The how-did-you-do-its?
My crimper is a sacred object.
I rank it high in holiness.
Perhaps it is as holy as –
please don’t laugh –
my bean pot.
Both were gifts from Hazel,
wonderful, funny, austere, searching Hazel,
a city girl
who had learned to navigate country life
but never lost her style or poise.
I was barely in my twenties, and she was …
well she was just a little older than I am now.
I was in training to marry her long-haired poet son,
but I never did.
I’ve always felt
that he would have married me
for my incestuous pie crust alone.
It looked like his mother’s.
It tasted like his mother’s.
But in the end,
pastry was not enough.
I triumphed in pie crust, but I did not win in love.
I excelled in pastry, but I failed in common virtue.
And now I know,
pastry is never enough.
And yet, there are days …
there are days
when nothing will console me,
nothing will hold me,
nothing will soothe my fretful soul
quite like making a pie.
And as for the boy I did not marry,
Well, that really is another story.
Copyright 2000, Barbara Jean Walsh