Tasting Notes

What good is a beautiful man when he’s just a collection of glass and bones knocking gently together on the bed of an ocean he filled?

I am clasped around your neck
like a keepsake given to you
by some wild woman you hated
but wouldn’t leave
Pruned and pickled in boxed red wine and beer
we are drowning together because
I am still too pick me!
to let go
I believe in your glory
You are not the louche sediment
conspiring at the bottom of the bottle
those unwanted but unavoidable bits
that elicit despair
You are not oxidised, not tainted
not a whiff of berry vinegar
No, you are the imprisoned bouquet
that puffs and preens behind fragile glass
You are the velvet tannins
that make me pucker and shake
You are a structured
and complicated sublime
You remind me we have it within us
to be beautiful things
But we cannot be beautiful drowning
What good is a beautiful man
when he’s just a collection of glass and bones
knocking gently together
on the bed of an ocean he filled?
You cannot be enjoyed there
There you are not treasure
You are just what’s left of a man
who died long before he got there
I suspect you know that
I suspect comparing you to wine is pointless
I’ve been trying to speak to you
in a language you might understand
But you’re not a man who drinks
for the taste
and I’m just a boy desperate not to drown
with his father

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Tasting Notes surfaced a number of years after I Choose Life. Part of me must have felt that I Choose Life is unfair in some way—that it does not allow my father his own glory or that it betrays my devotion to his aliveness. When I experience them together, I feel a sense of completeness, even as each stands complete on its own. A mirror, then, to me and my father, to you and yours, to me and you.