Growing up among men who made their wine,
my assigned task was the trip
to the cask in the cellar at dinner time
to kneel beside dank tanks coated
with sediment and sentiment
in rows below oil rags and scythes.
With a ceramic jug angled toward a spigot,
I’d meet the river and the rivets.
Today the chain pull of orange light
speckled by dozens of fruit flies
aerates what’s been stored in my mind:
the smell of yeast and soaked concrete
and the trickle and pour, splatter and spill.
I can hear them laughing from the kitchen,
smell their smoke and stew thicken,
aunts and uncles buried, now revived,
waiting for me and the wine to arrive.
