hiatus, before autumn

The last time I wrote here it was mid-summer.  It is now mid-autumn.  Good intentions once again gone astray.  Wishing for the magician’s trick for expanding time.  Our silence here may seem like we’ve been on a hiatus or sabbatical.  Would that it were so.  Hands dirty, backs sore, hungry, tired, and delighted.  The most hard-working summer and fall we’ve ever had—and happily we’ve fallen into bed every night.

We have been reduced to single words or short phrases--an apple falls, red clover in the vineyard, sweet buckwheat, a thousand pounds of grapes, hornets, a plate of tomatoes, a clutch of roses, dirty glasses, the scent of woodsmoke.  The thought of writing a sentence is daunting.  That’s another reason one or both of us have not been writing.  The belief that we need to construct a complete thought has hovered and kept us away.  I’ve heard it said that the great winegrowers are poets.  I imagine this notion fits for everything.  An efficiency and rigor of style.  And while I have no pretentions to being a great winegrower, only a hardworking one who lets the grapes tell their story into wine,  I am intrigued by the poet bit.  

So words and phrases it is even if just to keep a record of this extraordinary season. A white butterfly lost, a dog barks incessantly, the crickets hum, blue dusk in the sky, pink-lighted clouds to the west, a house light winks across the valley, the moon rises, the moon sets, the coyotes offer frenzied song, the cats pace the house, a single light in my office, vases full of pink cosmos flaunt, a storm brews, grape-stained hands, grape-stained feet, the smell of yeast and violets, grapefruit rind, the milky tea has turned cold, one grandmother’s tea cup, another grandmother’s white linens, a wall of French green beans, a sea of sweet little carrots, sausages roasted with grapes from the pergola, the raccoon is gone, the flock of turkeys circles the vineyard, the walnut trees have lost their leaves, a hot bath, roast duck, a bowl of soup.

--Deirdre