Wine with Dinner Loudon Wainwright III
I am huge fan of Loudon Wainwright and have been listening to him since the early 70’s 
and his music has provided a soundtrack to my life. Although his experiences are not the same as mine, his songs of love and loss have echoed my feelings on many occasions. It was difficult to pick a song but as I listened this track I remembered being an altar boy at St Roberts and preparing the priests robes in the sacristy and secretly sipping the communion wine.
I am not a good drinker, I get terrible hangovers and I have learnt over the years to hold back but I still like a glass of wine or pint of beer but I enjoy it best when sitting around a dinner table with family and friends or in a bar chewing the fat with an old friend.
To listen to an audio recording of this poem click here
Communion Wine
In the sanctuary of the sacristy
An altar boy sips the sweet communion wine
Later he tops up the bottle from a tap
It wasn’t only Jesus who could turn water into wine.
Years later he plays Monopoly on a Sunday night
In a sweaty student flat in Jesmond
Passing around demijohns of Spanish Carafino
Like he’s swigging moonshine in Bayou bog
One work night in a Harrogate hotel
When a misguided boss let him order the wine
He washed down his steak and chips
With a bottle of vintage Nuit St George
Dinner parties in the eighties
With a Chianti that came in a straw clad bottle
That someone alway took home to make into a table lamp
But never did.
Now he drinks a bold, dangerous and expensive Italian Amarone
Or a Rioja that wants to have a fight with you over a steak
He carouses with a Cahor wine on a French terrace at sunset
But his idea of heaven is communion with a friend over a pint of Yorkshire Bitter
©Jeff Price May 2017
