Before me a bottle...

Before me a bottle, a corkscrew, an empty glass. Do I dare? This is a magic vintage, and my spirit weakens from the remembering. The bottle-temptress is green, smoky-green, green of lichens and cool thickets where lovers escape from parched Augusts and prying eyes. Green of layered petticoats hiding soft and voluptuous shapes, a liquid-like rustling that hints at meadows full of birdsong and fountains sweet to please. Green beaker of hope, you are the throb of cult mysteries. You are raw emeralds and the drum of approaching thunder. I tremble before your dark green depths, your swollen blood reds and delicious overripe blacks. O beautiful red-breathed fairy in your green glass gown, nymph of golden-spurred drunkenness, handmaiden of couplets and charms, when I lift your mouth to make you mine you need no coaxing: inch by inch you reveal your naked scarlet self, a cloudburst of pinks and blushes, a torrent of flesh-soft rubies crushed together in a midnight lake of shimmers and crimson licks. I put my lips to your yearning pools and drink. Drink! Your peppered velvets soften my tongue, my grateful throat. When I taste you I taste springtime and rain, violets and eternity, your liquid soul a deep dim of colliding nights and secret harbors. When I taste you you make my mouth electric, and shock my words with lightening. I steady my pen, desperate to describe the heavenly lift of your burgundy wings. But first, another sip
~ZA