"Bitte ein Bit"

I have not savored Bitburger Pilsner for twenty years,
since those boozy nights on the garden terrace
in Recklinghausen, playing hands of canasta



with Uncle Douglas and his girlfriend Ilse,
both in their seventies, their love long hidden
while married to others, their passions rationed:

Uncle Douglas, the milquetoast British government clerk,
an aging Don Juan in Harris tweed. As we play, we listen
to my cassette recordings of Baltimore classical radio:

Arthur Honneger's "Pastorale d'été" and Kurt Weill's
brassy "Threepenny Opera" -- but the lovebirds much prefer
to giggle at their tape of puffins emitting farting noises,
and to gleefully swing limbs to hoof "The Chicken Dance."

Christopher T. George