Imagined places

Last night I finished listening to all the lectures on Melville’s Bartleby for my Coursera on The Fiction of Relationship.

 

I woke up early this morning with the birds tweeting and took  photos of the Saturday clouds. After breakfast I finished Melville’s Benito Cereno and started listening to Professor Weinstein’s lectures on it.

 

Intermittently, I’m reading Thomas Aquinas, A Portrait by Denys Turner and Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss, Meditation of a Modern Believer.

 

Mrs. Abstract handed me Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs which she finished reading. She proceeded to tackle “The Emperor’s Children“.

 

Certain things stir ambition. Certainly the presence of Lake Tahoe, nearness of the forest, and the altitude usher in the excitement in reading. 

 

IMAGINED PLACES

 

How are we to arrive at imagined places?

Everyone is capable of choices.

 

Heavy October vines, you can’t wander

Frantic measurements, walking the vineyards

 

You observe the canopy of leaves 

Sudden jolts of heat

 

Ascending the stairs unhurriedly

Each step containing surprises.

 

Can you learn differently

And be invisible?

 

You hold terroir sacred,

The source of all goodness.

 

Do you remember your dreams

After your first taste of wine?

 

You fill the glass

Swirl its full sensuality

 

You want your palate to find poetry

Garland of praises

 

With each sip you imagine 

The places, your arrival.