Zinfandel: A poem

(In celebration of Poetry month, I will be sharing a few of my poems with you this April, dear reader. Thank you for allowing me this indulgence)

you’re often invisible, like the night heron

is to the blue gill. like uncracked obsidian. 

the first stirrings of temerity.

fresh air. i don’t care that you’re not famous.

anonymity might be the thing that tames us, in the end. 

often invincible, through prohibition,

the whims of critics. the cool kids and their trends.

you’re persistently californian. deep-rooted. consistent. 

like brian wilson’s falsetto. cypresses silhouetted by a mist.

the deer of mulholland drive. 

saint’s alive, you’re blacker than night, too. 

when a cold wind rises at your back, you turn to meet it,

an overture of sweetness. there is no season

you haven’t danced with. no hands you haven’t hardened.

no palms you haven’t read. tell me my fortune again, love,

and don’t forget that part about how, when we met,

it was a reunion of sorts. how you saw in me a greenness;

some echo of us inside that graft union.