I tasted a little once, a glass you brought— fragrant, clear but dense— berry tarred with burnt oak, flavors of summer churned into late autumn. Ripened and bottled on a slope in Montenegro, that wine held fast the ombres of dark red velvet, slightly sun-faded, like covers of old hymnals.
This spring, between squalls of late snows, you offer photographs— shy woodland blooms, rising into chill green air: red trillium— strong pulse, black earth and flame, intoxicating hue that I never before knew.