ON MY SON’S APRIL VISIT

We spread peach preserves
over layered French brie
on a fresh English muffin.

In a too bright kitchen
he pours a cabernet.
Sit with me now a bit.

I ask how everyone is doing
and forget to ask about him.
Bordeaux photos surface—

there we are on the river
three years ago.
The French breeze in our faces

frozen on that path—
mother, son.
What lies ahead?

Take me forward
into vine tiered fields.
Sit with me a moment.

Let sun rest on our backs.
Let us feel its warmth.
Break open a bottle

taste the grape’s tart smooth
over our tongues. Let it linger.
We just found our way here.

Didn’t the heavens
just open? Didn’t we hear
the loud hosanna?

A VISIT TO BLAYE, FRANCE

A high tide rush takes us underneath the bridge into this city.
Each April, a bone chill lacerates my son and me. This spring we travel
the river that shapes the southwest French coast—

the two rivers that meet with ocean’s open water only a mile away.
A long boat brings us to Blaye. We walk cobbled streets in a once walled
town. Joey my grandson’s loss, an undertow.

In a Roman relic once captive Jesuit priests still haunt. World War II
sailor’s remains silent deep off the bank in brine-thick waters.
Ghosts are everywhere. We climb citadel steps to the medieval wall

look across the estuary to Medoc’ slow hills and twisted
vines, still green and not quite ready.  It is as if we could reach
across the body of water, as if we were close enough to spit

to the other side. The surface flat enough to skip
stones across like four years ago when my grandson’s stones
zipped the bay’s still surface. 

Later at La Petite Cave the wine shop’s owner leads
us down steep cellar steps to the cold stone bottom
where bottles rest in locked cells.

He talks about being open to what the universe sends us.
We sit at a table to taste a cabernet with a red horse label.
The wine’s ruby grapes come from porous

limestone and clay soil.  In the metallic ash death returns.
The universe calls to you. Sometimes it does try
and we don’t respond, the owner says.                                                                           

The cave walls close in like a pall. We swish; smell the melon,
the floral, and a hint of the French oak barrel tobacco.
The glass touches our lips vanilla lingers in our mouths.

White asparagus soup boils on the stove upstairs
and here in the faint stone’s musk sweat, in the translucent
glass a glimpse—Joey returns his cheeks flush a radiant pink hue. 

Florence Murry is the author of Last Run Before Sunset. Her poems have appeared in Slipstream Press, Stoneboat Literary Magazine, Off the Coast, Bluestem Magazine, Westchester Review, Cumberland River Review, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal and others. Florence lives in Southern California with her husband and two cats. Visit her website at florencemurrywriter.com.