prickly glou

In the Great By and By, Alan Watts

has passed

the True Master Sommelier Exam.

Level None.

“I’ve won,’’ he says laughing, receiving his certificate

only to watch it crumble into a powdery, ardent gust

of glittering, infinite stardust.

His fingers read the braille of the glassblower’s seam

encircling Methusalah’s deep, reaching punt.

She knows he’s in no rush, and so She tells him

stories. So many stories. None of them with endings.

All of them taking place nowhere.

His first customers are shy lovers

getting to know each other again

between lifetimes.

“What might please you just Now?”

Remembering themselves again only slowly,

and having momentarily forgotten Wine,

She returns to them an unearthing.

“Let’s see,” the woman says.

“I don’t know.”

The man adds, “Nor do I.”

“What shall we try?”

“In the Great By and By,

we are averse to giving advice.

It lacks a certain extravagance;

the tang of adventure.”

Alan takes the white cloth hanging over his forearm,

an elegant tool of his new trade,

and in a charade of intergalactic legerdemain,

waves it over Methusalah until only She remains:

no vessel for him to present.

Willingly, without so much as a word,

She descends, an iridescent, liquid bird,

into their hands, from which the pair drink.

He from hers. She from his.

“Thank you,” the lovers sing.

“And how might we pronounce your title, Captain?” the woman asks.

With much laughter, Alan throws his head back, saying:

Some. All. Yay.