I Shake These Wild Grape Vines For You, James Longenbach Poem by Dennis Ryan

Friday evening, September 9,2022 at 7: 50 p.m.; Monday morning, September 12,2022 at 7: 01 a.m. Note: the woman
addessed in the poem, Joanna, is Joanna Scott, widow of James Longenbach

--in memory of James Longenbach (1959-2022) former professor of English at the University of Rochester, poet, writer, essayist, literary historian and acquaintance of mine

I gather wild muscadines most days. I pick them.
I shake the long grape vines; they fall; I gather them
from the leafy ground; make sure they are firm, ripe.
(Overripe? No, not that definition for decadence—
learned somewhere sometime in graduate school.
From somewhere I just called it up; it must have been
a similar situation with you, why I had decided to write
this tribute, James, for you. I just found our correspondence.
Brings you—) They fall for you—since that email of some
ten years ago. Or was it eight? Don't know yet. I told Joanna.
In brief. No, the muscadines not in this conversation.
You had said, "The coffers are full" in response to my question.
Perhaps I was asking about Stone Cottage. I had read the first book.
I shake the grape vines now as I did then. I think of you.
Told you then as I tell her now. Now and then. Then and now.
Difficult to understand. Comprehend this life. She accepts
my poems; accepts without comment. She accepts.
You know. Her spirit; she knows yours. Tell me
I am accepted, if only for a moment. Wait, almost
as I wrote at James' wedding in Tarpon Springs long ago:
'Later, the sea laughed as we hugged, said our goodbye,
and James said, 'You're almost family.' Almost. Always almost
Almost, I guess, is better than not at all. I'm on the cusp;
the fringe looking in. Now I will think of you as I did
earlier this evening; a hat full of deep-purple grapes;
maximum ripeness, taste. I shared a few with a friend
on the walk home, literally. In fact. "Eat the skin", I said.
"Suck on it. That bitterness on top of the sweetness is your
salvation, the antioxidents therein that will help save your life,
Jim, allay your worst fears of dying young, age 71." (I actually
said these words to someone else, literally; but I have this friend,
Jim, who played at Notre Dame, who worries about dying young;
like two of his brothers did; former university football players
too, elsewhere.) Life is hard unlike these plump grapes. La vida es dura. Muzukashi mon. The season for wild muscadines is just about done.
I remain concerned for what October will bring; this critical month
for me; the month of Shawn's birth; Pat's; my mother's one month later. Lagging. That late death; Sue's to follow on mom's heels in February 1995. That grieving. Freud's Requiem. I lag ahead. In March. Joanna, what is your date of birth? Then...
I sit in bed now as I write; peace and quiet; the dinner dishes yet to wash.
Kim is waiting outside; impatient; there are other orders to follow.
Some avoidance is necessary at times. The bedroom door is closed. It's about 8 p.m. And how to finish? (The hardest part.) Muzukashi mon. La vida es dura. As the Consul found out. Thrown into a ditch to die alone. Without mercy. Oacaxa, Mexico. In a barranca. A fiction almost real. Under The Volcano. By Malcolm Lowry. Burrard's Inlet. With Marjorie for years, then without her. Cold Death. Joanna understands this. She writes. She wonders about things like mood, imagination, feelings; those things that help impart meaning to structure, form. Yes, I think so. Yes, she knows. You might ask her the next time she speaks with you in the darkness. When and wherever. Itsudemo, dokodemo. These two words appear again in a different poem; in a different context; note to Karen. (Joanna, you have read, but perhaps forgotten the other.) These ands remembered—
these words to spark your neurons—your imagination to remember. These synapses. Those dendrites. Pauses.
Yes, those too. L-tyrosine. Poems mean nothing unless they are actively spoken and actively remembered. In consciousness. Repeated there. Remember. Remember. Remember,
me, who now lives like a fugitive, but am not. (Momento mori? No, not yet.) Have never been, unlike the son of our next—actively spoken, addressed, remembered. This the mark. Return to—return to sender. Address unknown. No such number. No such zone. Elvis. At 8: 05 p.m. Tonight.