In a Spanish Garden

 

Verregneter Sommer - Rainy Summer 50 x 60 cm acryl -verkauft/sold

SOME PLACES

Some places seem to have more beauty

than the natives know what to do with. So we

have come here to manage their surplus. But all I

can do is think about the past, a useless non-

beautiful activity, producing emotional re-runs

featuring Regret, Humiliation, Eternal Embarrassment.

I go on an uphill speed march through an olive grove

to sweat it all out, and test my muscles, breathe a little

and think about the lamb I’m going to have for dinner

at a restaurant with turn of the last century Majorcan

Art-Nouveau atmosphere, a fanciful, curvaceous staircase

of exquisitely carved woodwork and turquoise tiles on the walls.

And there’s an actual dumb waiter lifting delicious food  

from a subterranean kitchen. We are going to eat in the garden

amid moonlight, palm trees, Spanish architecture, the air warm

and sweet with jasmine and pines. Returning from my forced march

I find Karin working in the back yard that we are renting

along with a bungalow—formerly a storage shed for oranges  

and wine, where we sleep and watch soccer on television. She’s trimming

and primping the flowers, and before I go in she looks at me, squints

and says, “You look gruesome.” Something to think about in the shower. 

Round Top Festival Institute, Saturday June 9, 2012, Texas Festival Orchestra