Hot Water and Wine Bottles

Hot water and wine bottles - here are the existential

possibilities: decanting a fine Chianti into the warm

rubber and placing at your feet, screw-cap loose so

you’ll slosh yourself to sleep; filling the quaffed and

emptied glass with boiling water for its explosion of

heat, the burn a permanent scar of your inebriation.

Or turning water to wine, imagine it having happened

without understanding the process, or the wine back

to water if rejecting the reassuring idea of miracles.

Perhaps there was a time when both would have a cork

and differences less distinct, though now we are

clutching at straws and don’t know from which to drink.

Snow is falling with the threat of its whiteness and strife:

here’s comfort in this bottle of plonk and a Dutch wife.