Grape Vines
By J. Trent Nutting

Their searching fingers held fast to scrub-oak,

cedar bough, a lamp-post. Leaves’ green Valentines

Tubed sticky clingy vine. Neighbors turned theirs

To jam, waited for Spring-hard fruit to shine

Red in Autumn, to swell and soften, to sweeten

In sugared jampots. Their price a vine-choked yard.

But we—not jam-people—spent three full

Days in June, July, August, cutting back

The grape. We ducked cap-catching liminals

Of branch, nosing unwieldy shears to the

Crotch where earth ended and vine began.

Thin stalks severed crisply, thicker ones creaked protest

To shears’ scissoring. By days’ end dead veins of

Vines spidered blonde, mapped our clipping. I never

Asked why not jam, but took up shears and fractured

Vine from root, just as neighbors plucked fruit from vine;

Their work sweet preserves, our work dead brown lines.

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