Color and Descent

We sit on a hillside, still

green but the leaves are

turning in the endless cycle

of color and descent.

Between us rests a half-full,

half-empty bottle of dark rich

red, and we drink the liquid

grapes and we drink the prayers

and the sweat of the Rhinelanders

who settled here and dug stones

from the ground and planted and

survived and flourished and died,

adding their bones to the stone

and the clay and the soil, to birth

new memories of bottles of red,

and bottles of white.

About 40 minutes west and southwest, and 50 minutes south of St. Louis begins Missouri wine country. The area around Hermann and Augusta, Mo., was certified as an official US wine district even before any areas of California received the designation (as stubborn as Missourians can be, they managed to agree on classifications before the Californians did). Oktoberfest is big in this region. The wine industry died during Prohibition but began making a comeback in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, some 16 wineries are located in the area.

This poem is submitted for the prompt at TweetSpeak Poetry, which in October is all about wine and beer. (Seth Haines, who’s behind the prompts, must be getting free samples for promoting this.)

This poem is also submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

The bottle of wine in the photograph is Augusta Winery’s Norton, made from the Cynthiana grape, and my personal favorite.