Sonnet 104 – Baser Spirit

I can’t afford Chateau Lafitte, though there
was a time I could.  When I was younger,
I drank the finest vintages, whether
it was wise or foolish to surrender

precious hours and dollars so.  Yet the chance
to taste a vine that only wealthy men
could savor, to imagine that romance
as the Rothschilds had known it could begin

to seep into the sap of a man born and
bred much more humbly, gave vicarious
pleasure.  These days, I drink nothing so grand.
And if it’s a baser spirit that moves

me, it’s a spirit that earnestly yearns
to find a beauty that soothes as it burns.