If Music be the Food of Love…

There are picture postcard moments life deals you
why fight them? You've just been gifted.
The problem lies in not knowing how to receive.

Crusty bread and ion-rich wine and being serenaded
by red-blooded men in an open stretch of field
in the deep Mediterranean south.

It doesn't get much better than that.
I'd wear the moment and let it sink deep
in the grooves between my bones.

I’d savour every sup of earth-grown wine and try
and name you all the notes, oxidised, not caring
that I couldn't really. But I'd entertain us this way

I'd say: I can scent the east wind curling through the vineyard
that grew the grape. How about you? And you'd say
I can taste the tang of a nearby orange grove

its leaves intertwined serpentine with that of the grapevine.
I'd nod in agreement then help you drink the whole bottle.
Afterwards, I'd turn to you and murmur, I think it's time for a nap

and you would agree but continue your feast, while I
would be lulled to sleep by the notes of strings stroked
by Italians who know how to pluck. And the evening sun

would languorously sink, turning orange with the hours
and it would be a picture postcard end
to the promise that began.