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In Reply to: How is it that... posted by Rick Bennett on May 24, 2001 at 03:06:25:
"My uncle Leo Bross, a gentler soul you've never met, worked his entire life in a greenhouse."Parallels in life are sometimes quite amusing.
The great American poet Theodore Roethke(a German American)was born in 1908, so that makes him your uncle's contemporary. He grew up in Saginaw,Michigan, where his father owned a greenhouse!!!
I Knew A WomanI knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods could speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand,
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay;
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).
Follow Ups:
I've heard of Roethke but hadn't previously read anything by him. I'll have to find a volume of his work. Kind of runs counter to the stereotype of the emotionless, technocrat, war mongering German. Thanks for the story about his father. My family are all originally from central and southern Ohio - not all that far from Saginaw, MI. Rick
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