Friday, March 27, 2009

Harvest Time




We wake up at sunrise. The morning air is chilly. I down French-pressed coffee and smoke Dunhill cigarettes. We head to the bus. We walk up the gravel road to the vineyard. The air is cool. The sun peaks out over the hills. We get our clippers and tubs and sit down on the dewy grass. We reach for the bunches of grapes. We remove the sticky, rotten ones, sickly pink and glistening. The garnet juice pours down our hands. We pick out the hollowed ones that collapse and deflate between our fingers. We leave the raisins because they add color and sweetness to the wine. We brush the gnats out of our faces and we blow the spiders from the bunches. We inch down the rows filling tubs as we go. The air is hot and the sun hangs overhead. Sometimes the wind stops. We rinse our tacky hands. We lie in the shade devouring our sandwiches and fruit. We search behind every last leaf; we seek every grape from every vine, in every row, in every yard. We squint in the sun. We act calmly amidst the curious wasps and bees. We have one more row to go. We gather closely and fill the last tubs of the day and walk off into the sunset.

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