The Winery

weary with wineries in Essex County
we enter another and I imagine their prices
as a reflection of the sprawling edifice

(stone faces ravaging Erie
inland is a barn-board mask)

the co-owner greets us at the tasting bar
apologizes and tells us she’s a cancer survivor
still scaling the wall to elusive health
then leaves to attend to her side-effected eyes

we sample wine/we sample wine
and I drift away to a table filled with unframed prints
sort through them the way I once sorted through
45's/LP’s and books in that used book store downtown
on King in Waterloo

the co-owner returns and regales the bar-bound group
with another story of a dream somewhere
in metamorphosis for years before becoming this butterfly winery
we today have stumbled upon

the price tags on the prints inform me that this sale is for the charity
of Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto which helped her so much

I look at our group approaching retirement and try to imagine
how many dreams we all yet cling to/those dreams tucked away
in the corners of our time/those dreams stalled in metamorphosis

dreams sometimes flow
as slow as frozen breaking waves

just as the beach I walked with you
those twenty years ago is now gone
to be rediscovered twenty miles west
by other young lovers conspiring
to control time