She doesn’t swerve and sway – say, like her exhaled smoke
drifts upward, wafting its way across faux ceiling tiles,
flattens out toward carriage ducts intended for a far less grand
purpose we now take for granted. Or a cat – a cloud
lazily flowing about like a poem – random yet descript. No, more
like the sudden thrust of metal, twisting through air, launched
by ancient vessels, perfectly harvested vines, ravaged and racked
with the skill of a forensic pathologist. And now, placed with
ever so much geometric care in gold-plated trays, preceded
by unleavened crusts we view as so much flesh, flushed down
the throat as blood, fermented and poured – as if time was
a theological constraint – drawn off the way purged fluids unfurl
quick off table to floor and curl clockwise down the drain.
Followed by prayer, remembrance and toasts of unfettered vintage.