“A Crystal Wine Glass” by James Matthew Wilson
The hour has come, the table stills,
And, as the conversations cease,
Someone’s last hurried whisper fills
The air with thoughts about a niece
And her pursuit of dangerous thrills.
A cheek turns rose, and then, in peace,
The host, stood at the table’s end,
Shares those few words his wit has penned.
But, as his thoughts rise on the air,
Sonorous, decent, sound but dull,
Eyes lower and fix their sullen care
On crystal glasses halfway full
Whose cut intricacies now flare
Like beacons in the evening’s lull,
To lure the mind of every guest
Toward brilliancy’s ecstatic rest.
How typical of us to find
Riches in boredom. How a thing
To which our selves had just been blind
Will fascinate and suddenly bring
Joy that the world is so designed.
The gleaming of the roadside spring,
The beetle in a brick wall’s shade,
Such signs seem as if for us made.
And so the schoolboy’s fingers trace
The whorls within the weathered pew;
A girl’s hand fiddles with a case
To clasp then open it anew;
And diners settled in their place
Find in the crystal’s hue on hue
A resonance much like a rhyme
To draw the hour out of time.
Click here to read the entire 2024 Meliora publication, including James Matthew Wilson’s poem “A Crystal Wine Glass.” Click here to purchase a print copy of Meliora.
