The Wine Of Life
By Benjamin Major
You can make yourself drunk on this.
Wines are like stale waters
Compared to this beauty.
You can spin around wildly
Like a small child on a beach,
Admiring in awe the colours, scents and sounds
That this angel brings into your life.
Staring out at a snow coated landscape
You feel creativity flowing through your veins.
Opening up a bag of vegetables
You are overwhelmed by their divine smell.
Listening to a voice calling from a distant past
You become ecstatic, beaming with pleasure.
That bag of vegetables becomes a delicious supper.
Left out in the sun, sea salt crystallises.
A rock is moulded into a grand throne by waves.
A cultivated vine bears grapes.
Everywhere, a transformation is taking place.
A young man staggers home one night.
He ends up on the floor,
His friends, unable to help him,
Wobble around, laughing and shouting.
What drives you to this?
Are these the only wines you can taste?
Every day we walk through finer wines
And we don't even notice them.
At home, a man and woman
Scream at each other in an intoxicated rage.
Everybody on the street can hear
Their unbridled accusations.
Had you sipped from a different glass
You may have been embraced in a peace
Which would send babies to sleep.
A horse is wild but can be bridled.
Unruly bindweed can be cut back.
The bindweed can be persistent
But you have to keep patiently working on it.
A fire can scar acres of moor land,
We try to quench it before it gets ugly.
The bag of vegetables sits there rotting,
Crawling with insects,
Unless a hand comes along
To turn the vegetables into a tasty stew.
The hand sorts, peels and chops the vegetables.
Witness the vibrant colours.
Smell the fresh scents.
Hear it sizzling and crackling in the oven.
This is not fast food but…
Meditative food.
So what I am trying to say is this.
I have been grown
Like the vegetables in the bag
By you.
Carefully prepared by firm hands,
Roasted in the oven
Till I'm steaming
By you.
Let us eat together the bag of vegetables
And let us wash it down with a fine wine.
The wine of life!