Summertime and an Ode to a Lemon
Good Morning Everyone!
In America it is Memorial Day Weekend and the unofficial start of Summer (I will be doing a separate Memorial Day post on Monday). It is a time that friends and family get together, have barbecues, goes to the beach, and has outdoor fun.
One of Summertime's mainstay that I look forward to is the radler or shandy a European tradition that has gained popularity in America. It is a combination of weiss beer and lemonade. A cool, light and refreshing drink on a hot summer day. My personal favorite is Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy (Linenkugel is a Wisconsin brewery from my early years growing up in Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin).
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So do you have any plans for the weekend? Cooking, Camping, Fishing, Going to the Beach, Spending time with Friends and Family? I hope you are not going to be sitting on the sidelines sucking lemons all weekend!
I leave you all with a song and a poem. Enjoy your weekend!
Ode To A Lemon
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
--Pablo Neruda
