The ocean, the fire, the trees, the wine, and yet
He asked,
What if you had to choose?
I joked, of course, the wine.
Because in wine you are warm,
In wine you can swing.
In enough wine we float out to sea.
He smiled, and I said
What if you had to choose?
Red or white?
He said it wouldn’t matter.
He would be happy either way.
I smiled. He said
What would you rather stare into –
the ocean or the fire?
Always the ocean, I said
In flames you can’t see the possibility
of whales.
The ocean, the fire, the trees, the wine, and yet
What are we going to eat? we both asked.
And so you added cheese
And I added bread
And then we stared,
Into each other
And we were full.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Meltvedt is a writer and medical science teacher in Sacramento, CA. She believes strongly in helping students use both the pen and community activism to make a difference in their community. Deborah has been published in the American River Literary Review, Under the Gum Tree, the SPC Tule Review, and the Creative Non-Fiction Anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher.