Coffee Break

Coffee Break 40 x 50 cm mixed media on canvas c/o Karin Goeppert

A SENSE OF PLACE AND OF TIME

What are we looking for

It’s not the cheap wine

Nothing is cheap here

It can’t be the sun of late

too often escorted by clouds

It must be the way the olive trees shiver in the heat

First there were Etruscans

who danced naked and played the double-flute

and had the darkest richest tans in antiquity

Interested in death’s aftermath they entombed each

other in frescoed chambers all over southern Tuscany

The Romans, more interested in killing

than in what happened after, killed the Etruscans

and were themselves killed

by Alaric and his Goths

who sound like a 60’s rock band

sacking the Holiday Inn in Jersey City

And now we’re here

half Goth half Roman

would-be Etruscan

olive trees shivering in the noon tide light

where what we looked for has found us