I consider this response, but what I want
to explain to her is the grape’s appeal:
how vines sink roots into gravel and sand,
clinging where nothing else will grow,
how they struggle for water and thrive;
how after being pruned to the ground
they return healthier with better fruit.

I want to point out how time and attention
transforms the juice into a liquid that makes
people laugh and weep, remember and forget,
into a substance powerful enough to attract
the attention of the gods, Zeus and Osiris,
Buddha and Shiva, Dionysus and Jesus,
into a symbol and instrument of metamorphosis
with all its exhilarating dangerous possibilities.

I want to tell the stories: how Leif Ericson
landed in North America in 1000 AD
and called it “Vinland”; how Gutenberg
began printing from an old wine press;
how King Dagobert was so infatuated
with a woman he built pipelines to bring
her the whites and reds of her native town;
how Winston Churchill pronounced,
“Gentlemen, remember, it’s not just France
we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!”;
how in the summer fires of 2007 a Greek man
saved his house by drenching it with wine.

I want to pour her a glass and take her
to the roof, the pool, the beach, a hotel room,
the dinner table of my childhood
where each Friday night my father
would insist we toast my mother’s beauty.

A moment before, the woman had seemed attractive;
now I consider her pronouncement
and wonder if I should probe for a reason —
headaches? an alcoholic relative? misguided
spiritual renunciations? Instead, I ask, Never?
No, she says, and I recognize the tone
of smugness with its tannins and acidity.
That’s okay, I shrug. More for me.