"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
div>
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
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