up
they rose
in a flutter of wings
the blue jay
and cardinal
like riding together in
a pneumatic tube
without a cylinder
like
beam me up
in a suction cup, scotty!
with nobody at the controls

a leaf fell to the ground

i painted a picture
of no one i knew
then he drove by in a truck
looked me in the eye
as I walked down the street
hey mister! hey!
wait!
i waved my arm
he kept driving away
my footsteps faster
the truck growing smaller... .
bye bye so long.
i live in the oh
so slow lane

After the last post, I looked up grapes on wiki. I looked up redcurrants, black currants, gooseberries. (The page for gooseberries was not available.) I looked up a couple of Bible quotes referring to grapes (and found that the majority of versions of the Bible online come through a source called BibleGateway). I looked up a couple of pieces of research regarding grapes and health, science articles listed in the Grapes bibliography on Wikipedia.

(An aside - if it seems I've come to rely upon Wiki too much, ignoring other more specialized resources from varied sources, it's because I have little access to other resources. Wiki is still easily accessible, and seems to have self-correcting mechanisms when articles are tampered with.)

A few observations after skimming through these articles:

One can learn a lot about our world beginning with the word grapes.

Grapes grow on vines. If we have no vines we have no grapes.

There's a sentence in the Wiki article that mentions that yeast naturally exists on the skins of grapes, enhancing the course of natural fermentation into wine.

Red wines have more active properties than whites because red wines are fermented with the grape skins. They also have a stronger fragrance.

I don't like to say grapes have medicinal properties because then we get into the issue of drugs and does it really work on this or that? and how much is good for you and who should have access to it and who should not. Grapes simply have a lot to offer toward our well-being and pleasure in life. Ideally, grapes would be available to us all: jams and raisins and wines and right off the vines. The content of the articles, and memories of the poignant, sweet piercing feeling the body has in response to a single wild berry such as a gooseberry or currant or a wild grape - the taste containing the essence of sun, rain, dirt - reminds me, yes - this is good.

When looking last night for a quote I recall that connects grapes to the sun and the matter of the universe (which I never did find) I came instead upon a web page that reprints Benjamin Franklin's recipe for making wine, first printed in his Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743. Below, find the beginning of his recipe and the link.



'Benjamin Franklin - Winemaking Instructions

'Friendly READER,

'Because I would have every Man make Advantage of the Blessings of Providence, and few are acquainted with the Method of making Wine of the Grapes which grow wild in our Woods, I do here present them with a few easy Directions, drawn from some Years Experience, which, if they will follow, they may furnish themselves with a wholesome sprightly Claret, which will keep for several Years, and is not inferior to that which passeth for French Claret.

'Begin to gather Grapes from the 10th of September (the ripest first) to the last of October, and having clear'd them of Spider webs, and dead Leaves, put them into a large Molosses- or Rum-Hogshead....'

He ends his article, writing: 'These Directions are not design'd for those who are skill'd in making Wine, but for those who have hitherto had no Acquaintance with that Art.'


The link to the image of the Almanack (from Wikimedia Commons): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poor_Richard_Almanack_1739.jpg

The link to the winemaking article from the website wineintro.com : http://www.wineintro.com/history/regions/franklinwm.html

After the kids were in bed, 'Star Trek: The next generation' reruns would be on the television, and that would be how I treated myself at the end of the day. There were many episodes of the crew during their adventures in outer space, and some I saw more than once. It now seems odd to me that there is only one scene that stands out in my memory, and that scene takes place on planet earth.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard has retired. So, how does the commander of a starship with a dynamic crew that's been all over the galaxy and then some spend his time off? Working alone in a vineyard wearing a great straw hat to shield himself from the sun. Picard becomes a link between the infiniteness of space and the tangible weight of sun-warmed grapes in one's hand, the very smell of earth.

the metronome is set
each minute, sixty beats
(tic toc tic toc)
the fiddler draws her bow

time
the metaphysical brat
leaps forward and past
the steady beat;
it twirls and pauses
and leaps again
atop a surge of notes.

time bends down to study
a dandelion's petals -
the metronome's beat
holds steady
(tic toc tic toc)
the fiddler draws her bow

knitting under folded sky

this is a detail from one of my paintings last October (2012)

Looking back, it was an odd week in the summer of 1977, when we were airboated to and deposited at Cottonwood Creek to camp on the banks of the Snake River in Idaho to search for fossils as part of a research project. We set up the tent near a tree some 40 yards or so above the river. We were in a small canyon, so the sun rose late and set early above us, and the twilight was lengthy. Some birds had hatched, and we watched the parents flitter to and fro bearing food for their hatchlings who were madly chirping. There was a log under the tree where we'd sit to remove our hiking boots and socks. One afternoon, as I flexed my sore feet, I spotted a small snake. Within a few minutes, we discovered maybe half a dozen of the snakes, baby rattlers, emerging from where they must have hatched beneath the log. We considered our options, and together hoisted the little dome tent and moved it a more comfortable distance away from the tree and log, which apparently was a popular spot for critters long before we had arrived. You'd think snakes and baby birds might be awkward company for each other, but they all seemed content to do their own thing.

Early one afternoon, I was walking alone toward the tent in its new location. I heard voices echoing from the river. That summer, rafters floated by every now and again, and that's what was happening except this group had pulled ashore on our little beach, looking for a place to camp for the night. A gentleman around my age was approaching. He had a long braid of black straight hair, a squared, open face, a hand extended to introduce himself, and a question about the possibility of camping nearby. But all of that was nothing because as he grew closer, I saw not only was he shirtless, he was wearing nothing at all. Now this wasn't completely out of the ordinary back then toward the end of the era of flower children, that people might raft down river in the nude. But this was someone who had never met me swiftly approaching, confidant of a friendly exchange.

I shook his extended hand, but experienced a very difficult time following what he was saying, and keeping my eyes focused on his face. A brief tour of the area convinced him there was not enough room for their group, and he said it was a pleasure meeting me, but they would float further down river. I watched him walk away down to the river, the braid of hair hanging down his back.