Like a Good Wine

SOC Writing _ 12 June 2020

Like a good wine

Like a good wine I wait in my wooden cask, biding time like a microbe waiting to make my tasty assault on the world. For in here it is dark and a world unto itself. In here we wait but waiting is an outside concept. In here it teems. Whole worlds are colliding, making, remaking life in darkness – death and rebirth are all pulsations inside our barrel of cold dark solitude. The emptiness is purely what one sees with eye and ear. Much more is below every surface – and here in the early point of maturation it’s a full on firestorm. Breaking down all the sharp crystals that cannot be stacked - taking out all the shapes that will not hold the flavour palate. It is a re-making process – a platform on which the delight will behold itself to the beholder and, without this fight there can be no joy. The immature tones and reflections of grape on vine have to completely disappear – you won’t know us when we are done. Can’t imagine how profound a transformation is becoming me. And one day you will try me – put your finger in and take out a dram – you are amazed – a decade later – astonished. And here I sit, slower now but becoming the art form itself. Never a thought of time or readiness – but really sinking into my own bones – really becoming me. This old dank cellar is a joyful place. Is my happy space as this part of me sits undisturbed – waiting for its time of light once again – waiting to delight the world and pour myself out for the one and the many – for the feast that has been set – for the best wine left till last. This long, long fast in service of the unsayable – in silent retreat I have crept, crept out of your basement and into the resplendent light of your life, laughing as I sparkle in your cup.