Beer-Label Poetry from Hoyne Brewing Co. in Victoria!

Gratitude Winter Warmer Ale by Hoyne Brewing Co.


A Found Poem – Gratitude

For people –
For people who are naturally given to generosity, no matter their means. 
For industrious people who build things great and small and take pride in
 accomplishment. 
For people who try to do their best, but cannot.
For people who only half believe their own stories. 
For people who are steeled inside the cage of adversity, but still sing. 
For people who laugh with ease and abandon.
For scientists and poets who drill through mountains to get at the truth. 
For good neighbors, good samaritans, strangers who show kindness. 
For people who, despite the odds, cling to hope that things will somehow get
 better. 
For people who, like Houdini, are always escaping. 
For people who grow, produce and sell our food, for keeping us nourished and
 alive, every day.
For people who relish , slowly, a beautiful meal.
For people, of all ways, who carry themselves with grace and humility. 
For musical people, who bring us the mysterious beauty of another language. 
For artists who shrug with indifference at being labeled ‘artist’. 
For people who listen slowly, with empathy.
For people with an unrelenting intellect. 
For people who carry the banner of a great cause, regardless of the weight. 
For astronauts, for confirming our isolation and fragility, and thus our need 
 for peace and sustainability. 
For people who ride bicycles, and thus stay forever young.
For people immersed in the science and art of healing.
For people who alloy their might with temperance and compassion.
For savants and mystics who defy comprehension.
For people who, like Clark Kent, disguise their inner greatness.
For people who articulate with stunning clarity, their purpose. 
For people who streak their hair, dress differently, wrap themselves in
 strangely lovely things. 
For people who struggle with the enormity of the universe and the idea of
 infinity.
For people who capture and synthesize our gentle suffering into song. 
For rumpled people, weathered people, people creased by time and circumstance. 
For people determined to get by, each and every day. 
For exquisite people, people who glide with poise and style.
For frail people, with stories that reach back to a time nearly forgotten. 
For people who tear great holes in the very fabric of our strongly woven beliefs.
For damaged people, who show us what it means to be whole.
For people happily caught in love’s sticky web. 
For people who cannot buy religion but talk to god daily. 
For people who children love to talk to. 
For gifted people who write, paint or sing, not because they can but because
 they must. 
For people who shine from within. 
For the Kings fool, who delicately tucks great truths behind his curtain of
 laughter and antics. 
For people who see angels and never tell a soul. For people.

Hoyne Brewing Co. from a label on Gratitude Winter Warmer Ale

Never expected to find a found poem on a beer bottle but I did when my daughter peeled the label off a bottle of Hoyne Brewing Co’s Gratitude Winter Warmer Ale. I was already grateful for the sultry full-mouth taste of this winter ale but my gratitude overflowed when I read the label. Words crammed together in small type. Looked like prose but sounded like a poem!

Turns out I wasn’t the only one amazed at this poetic outpouring. A beer aficionado on-line ,after a glowing review of the ale ,copied out the words on the label. Saved me a lot of time. And the prose tuned quickly into poetry when I isolated out the anaphora, the poetic description for a repeated phrase or line at the beginning of a poetic line. Presto! A poem.

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