Wine Poetry: At The Winery
Putting wine into prose
Cheers to 2024! We hope you had a great holiday season. We here at Sip Sip Hooray! are looking forward to bringing you some great conversations on the podcast in the coming year. Until then, we wanted to share this poem that came our way from a wine loving friend. Thanks Karen! The poet is Linda Pastan, who was Maryland’s Poet Laureate from 1991-1995 and who published 15 books of her collected poems. At The Winery was published in the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) in 2015.
At The Winery
1.
The Grapes are as round,
as smooth as beads
a child might string together and wear like pearls
around her neck.
2.
Asleep for years
in the barrel: a dark purple sea
with no tide, only the slow
invisible change from prose
to poetry.
3.
Syrah…Pinot Noir…
Chardonnay…
Voluptuous sound of a cork
surrendering.
4.
The answer
to every question:
Intoxication
5.
The vintner is old now,
shriveled and small.
In the lush air, sour-sweetness
hint of raisins.
