The Grape Astronomer
The figure on the balcony across the street’s behind the telescope again—a submariner behind his periscope at every sunset. The sky must fascinate him as much as flickering screens fascinate my other neighbors. If he spends an hour on each star, that’s over a thousand stars each year. The sky’s a vineyard of stars. Three grapes here, eight there. He must’ve gazed over twenty-five thousand grapes—a lot but just a fraction of the fruiting clusters in our patch of sky. But still! I’m in my bedroom with the lights off. The moon is new and the grapes are inching across my panes like sluggish white blood cells. My schnauzer grinds her teeth. The man is shifting the telescope. Finally! So many grapes. Yellow, red, green, beige. A cornucopia of colors. Or mirror images of one grape. What’s it like to be a grape—to have my color, vineyard, and vintage be what humans judge me by? I don’t want to be judged. Of course I want to be judged. I just don’t want to be mashed and macerated. Time, space, fruit, and wine. Plump, sweet, and suckling a vine. I’m ripe therefore I’m ready. If only I could shine, be more star than grape. What grape wouldn’t want to be a star, out of reach—inedible, fiery, and orbited? How rare it is nowadays for a grape to escape fermentation. At best, wine sips away. A star will supernova or raisin.