I do not seek to leap free from the wheel of change but to dance in that turning

In spring the vine looks like a crucified
witch tied hard to high wires strung
from weathered posts. Those shaggy tormented
limbs shall never flow with sap,
dry as bones the ants have polished,
inert, resistant as obsidian.

Then from the first velvet buds tearing
open the wands stretch bouquets of skinny
serpents coiling along the wires to bury
them in rampant swelling leaves, a dense
fluttering cascade of heavy green over
the trellis and path, climbing the pine.

Now the grapes swell in the sun yellow
and black and ruby mounds of breast
and testicle, the image of ripe flesh
rounding warm to the fingers. The wasps
and bees drone drunken, our lips, our
tongues stained purple with juice, and sweet.

We bleed when we blossom from the straight
grainy pine of girlhood. We bleed when we taste
first of men. We bleed when we bear and when
we don't. Vine, from my blood is fermented
poetry and from yours wine that tunes my sinews
and nerves till they sing instead of screeching.

I do not seek immortality, to be a rock
which only dissolves in slow motion,
but to age well like good wine harsh young
but fit to lay down, the best of me
in the dark of libraries and minds to be taken
with care into the light and savored.

I do not seek to leap free from the wheel
of change but to dance in that turning.
What depends more on the seasons
and the years than wine: whether rains come,
the pounding hail, the searing drought,
the lethal hoar kiss of the frost?

In this glass the Mosel pale as straw
shines with the sun of a spent year
and pricks my tongue with tiny bubbles
that were not in it last week. The vines
of its home are blossoming and the wine
remembers its natal soil as I must.

The press of the years bears down
on us till we bleed from every pore
yet in our cells sun is stored in honey
ready to be spilled or to nurture.
Like wine I must finally trust myself
to other tongues or turn to vinegar.

[Marge Piercy {1936- } 'Cutting the grapes free', from The Moon is Always Female]