Was it from a wine press, then,

that all this flows?

That rickety wine press Gutenberg rigged

            into a printing press,

the movable type interchangeable as grapes?

 

Do we owe to wine, then,

these great harvests of words

pressed into vast yields of books,

portable as bottles,

precious as spring water flowing through

            a thirsty land?

 

Do we owe it all to the vine

that we shelve our books in libraries

as we cellar our wine in waiting rows,

putting up words and wine against our future need?

 

Was it the wine press, after all, that has made us

into such drunkards of the word

that we imbibe by the hour from folded sheets

            of paper,

turning pages like doors that open up

fathomless spaces within ourselves?

 

From Wild Apples (Parallel Press, 2004).
Used with the author's permission.