Contemplation

“Grape Arbor at Neukastel” by Max Slevogt

summer grapes
sweet and firm
with the wealth
ripe of season

days folded
in birdsong and
suncast notions
of dignity

living arbors lend
afternoon shade
self-reflection in
winetasting chairs

fine al fresco
experience dear
to esthetic
sensibilities

minding valleys
whose slopes
bear wan ghosts
of good men

moral vintages
grown from the
garden of seeds
before sin

From my book Pieces of Wine

Grapes

 

Image from pinterest.com

 

give the falcon its wing

starlings scatter in bursts

across blue vineyard skies

the grape unmolested

reclines into ripening

safe in its succulence

peacefully purpling

sweet with maturity

leaving the felons

the plumed iridescent

escaped murmuration

to seek a new roost

for rapacious designs

fear of strength

and its consequence

once again proven

the gentlest of weapons

Homemade Wine

Painting by Marlina Vera

 

pressing of the grape
ancestral imperative
yielding hospitality
lifeblood of family
immortal elixir
congenial of body

with the last vivid
personal label affixed
a season of bottles
lay corked in their racks
who will be honored
with first ruby glass

only a priest of the
purple hand brotherhood

 

 

From my book Range of Motion

Plague Season

“Grapevine”
Painting by Darice Machel McGuire
From pic2fly.com

call back the gleaners from the arbor
the harvest hangs withered on the vine
the fruit fears to bloom before pedants
it shuns its exposure to treacherous air
exhortations that promise prosperity
cloy common sense having trained
generations of cynics with weather
that ruins the cycles of inchoate crops
the quadrennial bombast a plague
laying waste to the vineyards distressing
the prized heirloom rootstock of trust
ever fragile since first sown in hard rocky
soil in wash of the shadow of Pericles

Contemplation

“Grape Arbor at Neukastel”
Painting by Max Slevogt
From oceansbridge.com

summer grapes
sweet and firm
with the wealth
ripe of season

days folded
in birdsong and
suncast notions
of dignity

living arbors lend
afternoon shade
self-reflection in
winetasting chairs

fine al fresco
experience dear
to esthetic
sensibilities

minding valleys
whose slopes
bear wan ghosts
of good men

moral vintages
grown from the
garden of seeds
before sin

Pieces of Wine

“Neo-Cubism”
Tile Painting by Robert Lyn Nelson
From pacificatileart.com

a deep swimming sense
of belonging to culture
to history cleanses me

Mediterranean
empire and renaissance
father and mother

the martial red grape
the esthetic green globe
twin vines of my blood

vital vintages yield
the spine and the soul
of a civilized west

rich in letters and arts
liquescent science slakes
intellectual thirst

faiths practiced in goblets
grace pagan and Christian
altarcloth meals

stains drift from the past
come to rest upon tongues
that tincture the future

ideas formed in fragments
assemble themselves into
savory ancestries

liquid stitches of time
binding Caesars to Medici
ferment my history

leaving me merely a swatch
at the edge of a quilt set with
cups of tradition

Remembering Life

“Vineyard in Spring”
Painted by Kay Geiss
From fineartamerica.com

sullen skies shadow vineyards
rain the lone blandishment
grapes fend without sun
draw sweetness from memory