Purple-footed Grape Pressers

Funny how bits of heaven slice into my life, and yours as well.  This would have been an ordinary weekend, of laundry perhaps, a run to town for blueberries and bread, milk and orange juice, some vacuuming, all ending with the pleasure of folding clean laundry, warm from the sunshine, piling folded towels, think navy and white, then tucking the basket into a corner of the stairway to be put away after supper.

But a puppy needed watching, so here I sit, the sun warming on my back and drying up the dark blotches of water a thirsty dog sprayed after his visit to the pond for a cool drink.  I call it a pond, but the waterfall singing, splashing over the piled up rocks into the green of water lilies and tall grasses, the glints of gold from the school of fish that call this home, the bass growl of a bull frog, the rocky border circling this miniature body of water – flat rocks perfect to kneel on while you sprinkle in red and green and yellow flakes to the immediately ravenous fish, make this much more than a pond.

Ponds, this time of year, have a murky lace of green, blown sometimes this way, and sometimes that, like a floating mantilla.  The murky edges bear witness of cows or deer or maybe a raccoon or two along the water – prints deep and hollow, sucked out like those in fossil rocks in a mountain stream bed.  But this pond transports me to the tub of water by an Auberge in the Alps where you pointed out the fish you wanted for dinner or the humongous fish tank at a restaurant in the fog-shrouded cold and wet Cajas (the Andes of Ecuador) where we did the same, or my favorite thought right now, another manmade respite from the world, like this one, a netting covered pergola filtering the sun’s hottest rays, summery lawn chairs filling three sides of a rectangle, the water garden hugging the fourth, with a floor of slate rectangles pieced together like a puzzle, wild grasses working so hard to peek through the crevices.  I see and feel the sharp edges of the sun and its shadows laid in like an artist had shaded them with charcoal pencils.

I imagine I am in Tuscany, not northeastern Pennsylvania,and I lean into the shadows of the earthy colored water, shiny under the sun.  I lean into the ripples of laughter, or tears, splashing from the waterfall.  I listen for the clashes of swords, the hoots from purple-footed grape pressers – turning the grape riches into juice and the joy and anticipation into fine wine.

 And two thousand years evaporate like the blotches of water on the slate.