I dream of wine and vineyards

When Sophie Returns Home


Moving the barrels will require
her support, and bottling
syrah will change my life with her
and in the evenings
we'll sit with two
glasses on the stone table I made
in the rear orchard,
under the trees we planted
in our youth. Our parents
will be spirits by then
and returning from college
in California, Sophie might
feel them in the trees,
the vines and hear their
breathe on the wind. She'll
notice the leaves talk
to one another and occassionally
to us, and the ivy
growing on the fence
recalls the evenings
they sat here on the south
facing slopes
looking for nothing
in the green of the earth
and the blue of the water.

Maybe she'll hear the stories
passing through the rustle,
but by then I'll have forgotten
how to listen and when I pass
all the land becomes hers.
She might realize that the land
never blonged to us, that really,
we belonged to the land.