Zinfandel: A Poem

Dedicated today to the sweet voice and profound talent of Brian Wilson. May you rest in perpetual dynamic movement and peace...

Reissuing this one today because I just learned that Brian Wilson shuffled off his mortal coil. His voice and music were playing perpetually in the background during the writing of this poem…

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.