Too Fat to Enjoy Life

An ode to KGP:

In the simpler days of my youth I went on a 2 week canoing trip down the Shenandoah River.
2 weeks of idyllic weather and an unhurried existence where every little moment is cherished for what it is without the cacophony of this world barging in.
2 weeks of campfires, camp cooking and camp food.
2 weeks of my taste buds slowly loosing their comprehension between good and… passable.

12 days in, 2 to go and there was a ravenous desire for new fare.
A mountain convenience store beckoned up the side of a steep hill.
Tempting us with its unspoken possibilities.
Having obtained entrance the cool dark shelves laughingly displayed their wares,
knowing that we were young and weak and… hungry.

Sweets and sodas were grappled for in fiendish abandon.
Wild grinning faces stuffed brimming with delights.
Cool nectar of the bottling plant washing our throats.
In the midst of our revelry the number 10 cans stood,
and sang a siren songs of hearty man sized… meat.

Arms full of Dinty Moore Beef Stew
we recklessly made our way back down to the river.
That night, faces lit by the flickering fire light
we each ate our fill and nothing had ever tasted finer.

After the trip I begged my Mother to buy Dinty Moore.
Sitting at the dinner table, taste buds dancing with anticipation.
I questioned if the can had become tainted.

I’m not a poet, at least not like Robert Bruce. His recent poem Everything Was Beautiful, like most of his poems struck a chord in my soul – not sure it’s the same chord that Robert experienced – but to my way of thinking that’s the beauty of a poem. There is an amount of interpretation that we spin on to a poem as we try to personalize it. So here is my analogous wanderings.

Reading RB’s poem I can think back to the early days with my wife when we were still dating. I didn’t have 2 cents to rub together so everything we did was on the cheap. But there was such vibrant life in even the smallest of our moments together that they are still as fresh and vivid 10 years later as if they were just yesterday. The feel of her hair, the warmth of her hand in mine, the light caress of her lips on my cheek. Simple affections that become lasting snap shots.

But in that still quiet night come the kids and jobs and bills. The house needs repairs and it’s time for Wed. night choir practice. Life comes creeping in from every corner and in our desire, our need to try and hold onto and regain those simpler times we fill them with ever louder, brighter, stronger… stuff. Oh it tantalizes our needs for the moment, but after each exhilaration, something a bit more than the last is needed to satiate our desires. So the dinners have to be fancier than the last, the vacations more extravagant, the baubles and toys more costly.

And so Roberts poem, eloquently begs me to remember an easier time when all of life’s pleasure could be found in something as simple as a cheap merlot.