Poetry Sunday

If you grew up in the 50s and 60s in a middle-class family, like I did, chances are you ate a lot of baloney sandwiches, both baloney and white sandwich bread being pretty cheap, especially when Mom bought the day-old loaves at the local bakery outlet. 

Since I married Agnes, we still eat a lot of baloney in the summer, but in the form of Wurstsalat - a delicious summer salad made from strips of baloney mixed with chopped tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers in a vinaigrette sauce. It sounds awful to a lot of people, but I could eat it by the carload.

And speaking of baloney, here are some thoughts on the topic for Poetry Sunday - 

Baloney

by Louis Jenkins

There's a young couple in the parking lot, kissing.

Not just kissing, they look as though they might eat

each other up, kissing, nibbling, biting, mouths wide

open, play fighting like young dogs, wrapped around

each other like snakes. I remember that, sort of, that

hunger, that passionate intensity. And I get a kind of

nostalgic craving for it, in the way that I get a craving,

occasionally, for the food of my childhood. Baloney

on white bread, for instance: one slice of white bread

with mustard or Miracle Whip or ketchup-not

ketchup, one has to draw the line somewhere-and

one slice of baloney. It had a nice symmetry to it, the

circle of baloney on the rectangle of bread. Then you

folded the bread and baloney in the middle and took

a bite out of the very center of the folded side. When

you unfolded the sandwich you had a hole, a circle in

the center of the bread and baloney frame, a window,

a porthole from which you could get a new view of

the world.

There's a lot to be said for baloney, the modest hero of the middle-class table. Less so, of course, for the rotting baloney that comes from the White House.

Have a good day and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo