Strawberry Wine

(Barely a watercolor sketch ... one of many I've done while on my daily walks, exploring the countryside, avoiding the confines of closed spaces, when weather permits ... but I just thought I'd share it today.)

Today's poem is about lunar eclipse. 

I think it's about other things, too: It's a love poem, a poem about the exhilaration, if not intoxication, that comes from quietly, thoughtfully observing nature.

That's what I thought when the poem came to me after watching a lunar eclipse with Phyllis.

 
Those moments on that winter night brought back so many memories for me, principally the red of all those strawberries against all that green of the fields. 

It reminded me of the strawberry wine I once saw as a child. It reminded me of so many things.

I had faith in that little poem. I had faith in it when I presented it at a workshop, where the moderator dismissed it with the comment that "the writer was obviously drunk on words when he wrote this."

I couldn't help thinking that he had given it a rather superficial reading. 

But he was partly right. I was "drunk on words." I still am ... in the sense of enjoying that elation which comes from having listened carefully to the words coming to me, then having written them equally as carefully on the page. 

I maintained my faith in this little poem, and I am so glad I didn't give up on it. 

Now it has been published in the noted literary journal, Plainsongs. It is also the title poem of a 64-poem collection looking for a publisher.

And now, here it is:

Strawberry Wine ...

We stood gazing through the tangle

of dark branches suddenly still,
holding the moon in a vast silence,

watching, as others must have done
eons ago, wondering at this sight,
this transfiguration taking place

as the silvered moon glided slowly
into the shadow of a frozen earth,
going golden, pink, then deepening

red of strawberry wine translucent
in the glass, bearing the aroma
of fields snowed over with blossoms

and redolent of ripeness, that fruit
hiding in the quivering green leaves,
the sun bearing down, and now this,

this sweetness of witnessing a most
ancient of miracles, going to bed
with the distinctive taste of it

on our tongues, the scent of it
lingering on our measured breaths,
sleeping heavily, as though drugged.
© 2005 

(published in the Fall, 2005 issue of Plainsongs; received a special honorable mention in a ByLine contest; now the title poem of a manuscript in search of a publisher)


Today's word: redolent