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Georgina Milne

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Dawn in Tuscany

Daybreak sprawls and spawns the sun to strip away the pallid dawn.
The frail tints are bleached, then seeped in amber heat that soars and Falls and sears in shafts of shunted sunbeam-spears all scattered on the grass.
I sit awhile and watch
The sundrunk smock of lazy azure air and clouds that flock and pummel,
Unaware of where they're going
Or the means to find them there:

Observe the melded sky and lazy rise of yearning hills,
The peaks that gather till overspill, and latching out their clinging fingers
Stretch to hold and mill the rill.
Each curve draws in the shadows just to mould some shade and show
The sleepy hollow of the valley of Chianti Classico.

I follow with my eyes until they sight the vines,
And watch how light makes haste to swell them ripe.
They plump and drip down juice to anticipate the wine, they loosely hang,
Bludgeoned bulbs of sky and earth and ochre, hubs of ruddy sugar-blood
Sucked out from the umber loam.
We pluck them, pump them, sup their worth,
And all for one night's drunken-tide  -  slop-mouthed, lazy-eyed,
All tied to staring at the bare twigs stripped, and
Ponder in some liquor stupor how they came to die.

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