You must never grow too old to gather this fruit. Taste and see Ronja’s kindness, Mole’s loyalty, Peter Pan’s wonder. Taste and see the open window, the hand-hewn bed, your father running barefoot, your supper steaming on the bedside table. Feast upon th
Coming from Northern California, where my beloved Pacific Ocean is often a murky green or fathomless purple-gray, I always found the “wine-dark” seas of Homer resonant, fitting; until I remembered that Homer was writing about the sparkling blue gemstone that is the Mediterranean, set within its circlet of land. Wine-dark? Simple scansion cannot account for …
