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    Cold Press by John Jenkins

    winner of the 2003 ArtsRush poetry prize

    Noir skies above the Yarra Valley, thick rain
    curtains and cold seams, then sun-shot.
    A neat stud slides out to free steel jaws at gelid
    dawn-start. This is how we put the wine
    back into winter. A day (another day) upon the ridge
    with the patch-work itinerants. More sheer
    and smoky light is poking through the weave than
    yesterday, when you wounded a riot of sleeping

    cane and repaired its latency with structure.
    The long mounded tillage is punctuated by posts
    and the dumb dormancy of vines. The sap is falling
    to a root mass below these chocolate acres,
    curled roots, stiff hands, dull fingers in the earth.
    Curt work to toss the curly cuttings anywhere,
    rain weeping down our backs, in this mud-splattered
    surgery, where vintage is asleep beneath the happy

    splash and patter of weeds against your boots.
    Elegance cannot be cultivated without us.
    We strip excess from aisles of skeletons, leave
    bone-arms in our wake. Main canes thrown wide,
    twisted over wires, then end-tied with a clip.
    Start to see the shape of things to come, when the
    scribbly disarray of waste is deftly edited. Each plant
    becomes a trunk, with two arms lashed to the fruiting wire

    upholding ten short stubs, of three buds each,
    poking up from the old wound-wood like blunt thumbs.
    A tractor rolls down these rows, its whirring blades
    held high to rubbish, the canes confetti in its wake,
    followed by gun pruners, the grim gangs, with jobs
    still to do, only just secure with their human edge.
    Machine pruning is too crude for premium wine,
    and the old hands sculpt endless hills of skinny

    Christs from the vine mass, pull out moons-and-back
    of tangled canes to make a topiary of daylight.
    Crab slowly down these rows with me — tense against
    your own bent back, in a sullen muscle-trance,
    worming down the automatic aisles of day,
    a slow stagger to the dark fugue of fatigue.
    A simplifying landscape stands out like Granny’s
    tooth between the cold, cross-hatched cordons.

    Each vinous trunk a fist pushed up from dirt,
    grasping at the light with new leaf and tendrils,
    its story told in scars, lopped arms and leathery
    layers: the new wood seals fresh tissue spilling up.
    A reek of sweat and dull ache to your feet:
    two scarves with a silly floppy hat and creeping
    bone-chill. You become a dot, a concentring cipher.
    The spring compresses with each cut, the beak

    springing back for more, and metal slides on
    metal as it bites, hinging on an easy pressure bolt:
    snap-happy with a thin grin, closing on vine fingers.
    Remove dead wood, nip unwanteds in the bud.
    The canopy is divided into ‘Grecian lyre’, or ‘Scott Henry’
    style, or ‘Ballerina’, so leaf faces are offered
    to full light, air circulates and vines stay free
    of spoil, the new shoots promised perfect fruit.

    The day ends with a beer. We have opened
    a thousand stark wire windows onto winter hills.
    Thirty buds are left to rise, vertical as an ideal,
    to light green fuses from each living candelabrum.

    John Jenkins

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