—An occasional poem for the Coppola Niebaum Cafe, 10/8/2003
It was on one of those achingly clear days in Fall, like today,
when the coastal ridges bezel the sky into lapis lazuli.
Because the harvest is in from the fields,
long nights of roulette with the weather are done.
Indian Summer has again sweetalked the grape into honey,
and coastal fog suckled up the river canyons at night
has teased that hot, sweet passion of sun and stone
into a diaphanous gown of noble rot and bloom
so that we may freely dance under the Hunter’s Moon.
Kirkegaard said the spirit of occasion recorded in the mind
is an indelible distillation of watery particles of memory—
like the generosity of wine shipped round the Horn.
On the long journey from vineyard dust to the delta of tongue,
we toast that struggle towards civilization: we raise our glasses
to the murals of Las Caux, to the pharaoh’s last offering,
we celebrate the miracle of water into wine, where, under a Tuscan sun,
Caesar’s Gaulish legions drowned solace at the bottom of amphorae,
where Cortez and Columbus decreed wine to grace the New World,
and an army of padres marched north to the tabula rasa of golden Califia
with their precious cuttings for the sacrament of the altar chalice,
where a Hungarian Count Haraszthy, slipped the first zinfandel
into the sweet Mayacama soil, opening her bounteous vein...
We toast the past with this fine wine, older than recorded history,
yet as young as the next harvest, into the poetics of the dream
Where we hold to the party line: In Vino Veritas,
because there will always be poetry, to be sure,
and not only fine conversation steeped in wine,
where we swirl the stem to observe the other
between veiled sheets of glycerin
cascading into a slow waterfall of desire.
And there will be eloquent speeches—
not to be made, except in vino,
and no truth to be uttered here,
excepting that which is in vino—
where wine is a defense of truth,
and truth, a defense of wine.
10/8/2003
