knowing she more than any woman in Zamable
the Mexican town now archived,
now the personification of
an archive
where impoverished and generous women placed
–he gave her grapes–
placed parchments, confessions, thoughts,
stolen land titles, newspaper clippings
stretching out moments freed
of tasks that had found them
in the small and broken un-graped huts,
he brought her grapes
knowing her feast
had been to stomp hard,
create and pour bottle after bottle,
yes, she bottled a grape-bled ink and dispensed it,
as she did her other mouth,
one-time gifts and arrangements,
she tutored and taught until each woman,
all the Purépecha sisters and cousins
could devise new ways to find the lost moments,
the time before the grapes, the ink,
the inner kindling enabling them to write out
their past, their present,
their vines of tomorrow,
he brought her grapes,
knowing that she . . . .