OPTIONAL POETRY

Vineyards under snow, civilized rows, punctuation for a run-on landscape. Our straggling vines look like veins without a body, the blooms we contain, of darkest blood, clandestine first pressings. Even at night the drifts are pure white under a haloed moon— why speak and spoil the effect? Let a suspended particle be: Ice crystal, brix, a word unspoken— I’m learning to let a thing fall, or ripen