Le Vin du Diable   


Our graduation ceremonials
are marked in fermentations, moving from
the bottled ciders of our teenagers
at family gatherings, towards Champagne
on coming home from universities.
And each year I am called on to explain

the process of its fabrication, how
the grapes are grown, and where. Dom Pérignon
did not invent the process. It was first
discovered by an Englishman, who gave
a paper on the method. Sugared yeast
is added to the once fermented wine

but it was Pierre Pérignon, a monk,
who fabricated wired corks that held
the second fermentation still. Three years
is often necessary. Turned in racks
meticulously till it's ready, lees
disgorged, and dosed sometimes with aged cognac

or framboise and resealed, it arrives
as labored wine. Almost as sacrament,
in handmade flutes by candlelight, we toast
the years in rites of passage, rituals
whose words, selected carefully, convey
the laboured art of generations grown. 

Fromage

        “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
                                                                                        ~ G. K. Chesterton


The churn churns on and on, and so do we.
Much Gorgonzola mystifies our sight.
The pungent product is our ecstasy.
 
By holes in slivered Swiss, we almost see,
but chèvre on the knife seems nearly bright.
The churn churns on and on, and so do we.
 
What vat produces, every time, good Brie?
The accidental is our given right,
the pungent product is our ecstasy.
 
As we do homage to aged Guernsey, glee 
envelops us with every lucid bite:
The churn churns on and on, and so do we.
 
While making new, we preserve colonies
then wrap them up in cheesecloth, pulling tight:
the pungent product is our ecstasy.
 
Produce, consume: the pattern endlessly
repeated, till the onrushing of night:
The churn churns on and on, and so do we.
The pungent product is our ecstasy.

Fritillary


I half believe all wines exist at once
within this glass, I almost half believe
each can be tasted singly, while the whole
is savoured. But the thought is delicate
and open to dispute: Falerian
mixed in with new Bordeaux? I half assume

that in this garden, everything contends
in flowering, with every other bloom:
fritillary and nightshade in one space
at once with Lenten rose and cosmos, sown
with careless imprecision through the beds
as if the gardener had a plan, and these

all intersect together, politics,
this garden, words and sex, remembering
that lyric narrative's sequential, eyes
follow this page, our lips make lines, and yet
sound's meaning, and the known is what we feel
while all our complex memories converge.