Chokecherry Wine

Marble Springs 2.0 screenshot of Chokecherry Wine

What we know

A thin, reedy drink that too many often sweeten.

Chokecherry Wine

by Robert L. Smith

The chokecherries should be quite ripe… .

There is a voice in the wine,
as pervasive as sadness or sin.
It runs beneath the unpaved strets,
buried deep in the ancient
marble bones of the earth.

Rachel Cole heard it
in her mossy cellar
as she mashed cherries
for what she would have
insisted were preserves
had anybody asked.

Sadie Stoner heard it
at meetings of the Ladies Aid,
when the conversation
and theclick of knitting needles
seemed for an instant
like the shrillness of birds
in trees whipped by high wind.

Bridget O'Shanty heard it
as she turned her face to the wall
on winter nights at the White Owl
when she could feel the blizzard
beginning inside her head.

Doc Nancy heard it
more clearly than anyone,
though she seldom drank
since whatever surgery the town required
depended on her steady hands.

Foxglove and ergot will lose babies.
All her life, Nancy would remember
how when it was over she gave Zandra Miller
a swallow of wine¹.
in a tin cup,
and it slipped from the girl's fingers,
leaving a darkness like blood on the sheets. 

Footnotes

1. Item 2054. Chokecherry Wine. Gather the berries ripe and dry, bruise them with your hands, and strain them. Set the liquor by in earthen vessels for twelve hours, to settle. Add enough good moist sugar to cover. Set in a kettle over the fire, clarify it with the whites of five eggs, let it boil one hour, and when it is almost cold, work it with strong ale yeast and tun it, filling up the vessel from time to time as the levels sink from working. After bottling, it will be fit to drink in twelve months. Enquire within upon Everything

Connections

Portal

Sources

Drawing of an anasazi pot or basket, likely for gathering meta:chokecherries.
Doc Nancy

Portal to secret connections