Poetry Forum
9/8/2011 3:47:23 AM
Tina Gamble Posts: 4
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Persimmons fall, and we shall make persimmon wine. We shall come with jars of music into the corners of our sorrow.
And winter shall pass. I have seen it fade along the forsaken creeks of the Osage, between Okesa and Nelagony, Gray Horse and Pswhuska. I have seen it fade through Burbank, Fairfax, Wizzbang, and Hominy. (Those are the names of Indian towns.)
Do not be afraid. We shall drink persimmon wine! Come when the hills begin to shape with their green and silent passion. Come when the hills
catch fire with April and the smoke of the redbud tree lies across the prairie. Come when the water's green, and venturing, and first alive.
Pour from the crocks the miracle of wine. Who is afraid of what we might have been? Or what, so long ago, we chanced to be? (But do not die before
the wine is done. Live for the wine that we have made. Live for the drinking of the wine that is to come.)
Persimmon wine. And dancing upon the waters: Bird Creek and Sand Creek and the Caney River. And through the sweeping valleys of the sumac and the sandstone.
Persimmon wine. And dancing upon the face of time. Longhorn cattle far from home, the Brahman bulls, the push and pull oil beneath the ground,
the Katy railcars weeping on the wooden trestles, nameless outlaws starving in the shadows of the caves. Dancing! Like the driven horses,
scattering and laughing in the fields of Bigheart, in the pasturelands of Hulah and Wynona. (Those are the names of Indian towns.)
We shall make persimmon wine. And drink the wine. And then lie down. We shall strip to the wet and loving roots. Oaks. And cottonwood,
and sassafras. And sycamore. The sky is blue with thunder. Shall we not lie together, the music on our lips?
Sundown over Little Chief. Sweet is the sound of silence. There is a sudden flight of mourning doves. The sun-lashed rain is catching our hair.
We shall make persimmon wine. You come!
And when the future finds us, let them say, "They were a magic people in this ordinary place."
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