Persimmon Wine

Persimmon Wine


Persimmons fall, and we shall make
persimmon wine.
We shall come
with jars of music into the corners
of our sorrow.

And winter shall pass. I have seen it fade
along the forsaken creeks of the
Osage, between Okesa and Nelagony,
Gray Horse and Pswhuska. I have seen
it fade through Burbank, Fairfax,
Wizzbang, and Hominy.
(Those are
the names of Indian towns.)

Do not be afraid. We shall drink
persimmon wine! Come when the hills
begin to shape with their green and
silent passion. Come when the hills

catch fire with April and the smoke of
the redbud tree lies across the prairie.
Come when the water's green, and
venturing, and first alive.

Pour from the crocks the miracle of wine.
Who is afraid of what we might have
been? Or what, so long ago, we
chanced to be? (But do not die before

the wine is done. Live for the wine
that we have made. Live for the
drinking of the wine
that is to come.)

Persimmon wine. And dancing upon the
waters: Bird Creek and Sand Creek
and the Caney River. And through the
sweeping valleys of the sumac and
the sandstone.

Persimmon wine. And dancing upon the
face of time. Longhorn cattle far from
home, the Brahman bulls, the push
and pull oil beneath the ground,

the Katy railcars weeping on the
wooden trestles, nameless outlaws
starving in the shadows of the caves.
Dancing! Like the driven horses,

scattering and laughing in the fields of
Bigheart, in the pasturelands of Hulah
and Wynona. (Those are the names
of Indian towns.)

We shall make persimmon wine. And
drink the wine. And then lie down.
We shall strip to the wet and loving
roots. Oaks. And cottonwood,

and sassafras. And sycamore.
The sky is blue with thunder.
Shall we not lie together,
the music on our lips?

Sundown over Little Chief. Sweet is
the sound of silence. There is a sudden
flight of mourning doves. The
sun-lashed rain is catching our hair.

We shall make persimmon wine.
You come!

And when the future finds us, let them
say, "They were a magic people in
this ordinary place."


Winston Weathers

A Chorale fo Lonely People in the Osage Hills