Abbaye de St-Vivant
by Judy O’Kane
My hand must have slipped
and the images showed the earth spinning,
the electric light a full moon.
I got to my knees
to get the ground into the frame
as the winemakers prepared to sing
for the last time. I might
have been paying homage
to the Cistercians, to the terroir,
Related
to everyone singing into the stones.
The walls echoed, a call and response.
It was an exchange of vows
witnessed within the abbey walls.
It was matins and vespers,
all of the hours;
it was an offering, a form of grace,
all of us honoring
the work of those who went before us.
Content from our partners
Aubert de Villaine poured wines
from the vineyards at St-Vivant
and we waited, like communicants.
About the author
Judy O’Kane worked the 2009 harvest in St-Estèphe and trained at Ballymaloe Cookery School on sabbatical from partnership in a legal practice. She has recently completed a PhD at the University of East Anglia and holds the WSET diploma. Judy won the National Memory Day Prize, the Charles Causley Poetry Prize, the Irish Post Prize, and the Listowel Writers Week Original Poem Prize. Her prose work Thirst, an exploration of terroir, a work in progress, was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Award by the Biographers’ Club. Judy has read at the House of Lords, at Pinot Celebration, New Zealand, and at Borough Market in London.
