CHAMPAGNE

The glass is a candle-lit chandelier
whose memory of the wind makes it undress
and undress a few lace bubbles at a time.
You come down to the pool to drink as if you were
a panther approaching a water hole.
Your lips tint the autumn with twilight
of parrot fish spitting coral and the late
Andrew Oerke is undone, swallowed soul
and body, bubbles and both, holes and all
down the pipe of your flute to where
I wouldn’t care. The candles keep on winking
like daggers flashing in a dance, and blinking
like the tall thin eyes of wheat at harvest
and your lips return to their facial roost
but my eyes sink in a sea no one could cross at all.

Andrew H. Oerke: In feature articles The New York Times and International Herald Tribune have said that here is a poet "whose muse is a world traveler." Andrew Oerke has lived many lives. After suggesting the idea of the Peace Corps to Jerry Clark, Kennedy's campaign manager in Wisconsin, he went on to become a Peace Corps Director in Africa and the Caribbean, and for many years president of a private and voluntary organization working in developing countries. Oerke worked and visited in more than 160 countries, is a Golden Gloves champ, football player, university professor and Poet-in-Residence, dean of administration at one of the largest community colleges, U.S. Korean War veteran, World Bank consultant, and consultant to the United Nations on the Gulf War, on financial services, and on the environment. Mr. Oerke was also the first Director of the International Folk Festival on the Mall for the Smithsonian, and as Dean of Administration for the Medical Center of Miami-Dade Community College started one of the country's first Wellness Institutes. Mr. Oerke has studied at many universities in the US and abroad, and was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and scholarships at the University of Iowa writers' workshop, where he studied under Mark Strand, and at Baylor University where he studied Wellerisms with Charles G. Smith. Andrew Oerke's work has appeared frequently in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Mademoiselle, and in many other publications in the U.S., England, France, Germany, Lebanon, Malawi, Kenya, the Philippines, Jamaica, and Mexico. He has published five books of poetry. In 2003, he was given the award for literature by the UN Society of Writers and Artists. He is now living in the U.S., and has returned full time to writing poetry, his first love.

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