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- RonPrice - 12-21-2005
I was not sure if this prose-poem was appropriate here, so I'll send it to the moderators for 'veting.'
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BOUQUETS AND AROMAS
After a late lunch, a little after 3 p.m., I sat and watched TV for a few minutes, as I often do in the afternoon, relaxing after what is the 2nd main meal of my day. The TV is like a step-down transformer that helps my food settle and my brain turn off after 3 or 4 hours of reading and writing. Television has, for me, a definite sedative affect. I went back to my “afternoon writing shift†and then enjoyed a late afternoon walk. By the time I ate my evening meal I had added two more hours to my total literary effort. Today would be another good day of at least nine or ten hours of solid intellectual endeavor.
The 20 minute TV program this afternoon was in the ‘discover Australia’ vein. For some 20 minutes I watched people talk about winemaking in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania and in the Barossa in South Australia. I had lived in both these areas. I was also exposed to winemaking in Margaret River, a place I was familiar with as a result of living in Perth Western Australia. There was winemaking in NSW which I saw when on a teaching trip 20 years ago. I had seen many vineyards in Ontario where I spent the first 27 years of my life. I won’t go into detail here because I have not had a drink of wine since about 1957, nearly fifty years and I am not particularly interested in the subject.
What I did find interesting were the comparisons and contrasts between the planning, the planting, the growing, the harvesting and the marketing of wine and the several processes involved in writing poetry. Science and art combine now in both fields; it helps to have a vision of where you want to go and what you want to do. Tradition and modernity, identity and international marketing are as much a part of poetry now as winemaking. As I watched the program moderator walk through wine cellars, vineyards and dining rooms and talk to winery owners, viticulturists and innovative winemakers as if they were dealing in some sacred trust, I could not help but think of the sacred trust I had inherited from generations of poets.
What is the acetaldehyde
that produces fermentation
and poetic oxidation? What
is that colourless, volatile
compound that I find quite
naturally, desirable in small
amounts sometimes and in
high concentrations too?
It seems to me there is experience,
so much that one can not add it all
up like the six, the two or the five
times table, but it seeps onto pages,
picks up a blend of life’s acids in
varying ratios: sadness, pain, joy,
tragedy, suffering, heaven and hell.
There is also some leaven that
leavens the world of being
and furnishes a power through
which poetic art is made manifest.
Some souls, like yeast, leaven:
what is that lingering aftertaste
that I am unable to judge? What
is that maturing smoothness and
complexity? What is that aroma,
that bouquet? Does it tell of some
timeless feast hereafter? Not for me,
not for my damaged olfactory sense!
Ron Price
December 19th 2005
- winoweenie - 12-21-2005
Hi Ron and welcome to the board.Nicely written. Sorry to hear you're abstaining from one of lifes great pleasures.As RL Stevenson so aptly put it " A day without wine is like a day without sunshine ". WW
- RonPrice - 12-21-2005
winoweenie, I thank you for your positive response to my poem. I certainly like the analogy between life and the sun. Our life, I have always said, should be like the sun, warming all who come in touch with it.-Ron
- wondersofwine - 12-21-2005
I particularly liked the line about the blend of life's acids.
I majored in English in college and enjoy poetry so appreciated your contribution.