(The oak–liquor relationship finds expression in the cadence and emotional charge of this poem. Its imagery, symbolism, and metaphorical resonance seeks a distillation that is both timeless and transcendental)
Long before lips knew the taste,
oak and liquor found each other.
It was not a meeting of moment,
but of destiny—
two strangers who spoke the same ancient tongue.
The oak stood patient,
rooted in centuries of rain and wind,
its rings counting the ages
like a scribe keeping the time’s memory,
In its grain lay a map,
a script the spirit would one day learn to read.
The liquor came young—
all flame and bravado,
restless as a colt in a field,
its voice too loud,
its heart too quick.
It entered the barrel like a pilgrim seeking wisdom,
unsure if it could wait long enough to receive it.
The spirit enters raw,
its fire untamed, eager to dance.
The oak closes around it,
offering darkness, offering breath.
They share the slow alchemy of years,
turning heat into honey,
sharpness into song.
The years do not take away much from the spirit-
Only its haste.
Season follows season,
the oak lending whispers of vanilla,
shadows of smoke,
a hint of the forests it once called home.
The liquor takes these gifts into itself,
and in return,
offers the oak a reason to endure.
The oak lends its heart;
The liquor lends its wings
This was no passive storage,
but a conversation—
the slow barter of colour for calm,
heat for depth,
youth for a certain kind of immortality.
From Burgundy’s silent cellars
to Islay’s salt-kissed shores,
from Kentucky summers
to Japanese mountains veiled in cedar mist,
the ritual repeated itself:
the oak lending its strength,
the spirit shaping its own soul.
Across continents and centuries
this trust has held—
the oak trusting the spirit to be worthy,
the spirit trusting the oak to shape it
into something rarer, finer.
One as teacher, one as pilgrim.
One as vessel, one as voyage.
What the oak holds in stillness,
the liquor carries into song.
One gives the gift of time,
the other the gift of chime.
And when at last the seal is broken,
they emerge together—
inseparable,
as if oak born with a light in its leaves,
and liquor born with centuries in its heaves.
scribo ad LX 