Mark Hart Dandelion Wine Some objected to my barnyard source. But so many grew there, such excess, smiling. Still smiling in the bucket, brimming, effervescent, resinous— the color of heaven. Nothing in the house spoke this language. I’d stare at my face in the mirror— Where is it, the bright bloom? Fingers stained with saffron, “butter” we’d once smeared in faces, I uproot the fine filaments for hours. Sugar, yeast. Blond raisins for body. A week of frothing madness in the pantry, Dionysian vapors overwhelming every room, then a month in jars under airlock in the cool of the root cellar, in the dark, in the dirty underbelly of the house, bubbling. Science: A few grains of sugar made it bloom in the bottle, too much made a bomb. I was eighteen. We drank it young. It was fragrant. A hint of yellow caught the light.
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