The woman, a mountain spirit, gazes down wondering

About this majestic vineyard below.

She speaks to the browned workers.

Has three requests: Draw me a circle, dig me a hole among the rows, bury me.

Bury me so I can become, stem by stem, leaf by leaf

All that I could not know before.

I wish to have a new life, new growth, new wisdom.

For learning the scent of fertile soil, hearing the words of tangling roots.

For feeling grapes ripening, juicing sweet

From eating summer sun, becoming blushed and vermillion.

I would lay on vine-charred charcoal left from the wildfires.

Be bathed in workers sweat, blood.

I could taste the merlot before it is born.

I could know the insect’s scratch of song.

The Mother Oak’s many histories.

All this to see another side of myself.

To announce over and over again that underground

Everything is laced, woven, interconnected, growing.

That under these vines we all speak the same language.

Joanne Blossom