Drinking Gum Tree Words

 

Our restaurant closed early, I can’t recall why. We didn’t care why. We were like school kids given a half day, cleaning up and getting out of there as rapidly as possible. 

Somehow it was agreed we were going for supper, the Greek joint up the road. No one said anything, we all just started walking that way. And it was agreed that the boss was paying, despite no one asking her.

We stopped to buy wine on the way. Phil talked me out of my usual wine policy, cheap and lots of it, together we bought something with a price tag and an unlikely label. That label promised a hint of eucalyptus in the wine, we simply had to try it.

When eucalyptus trees are infested by insects they produce an oil that deters the bugs and heals the wounds they inflict. Some of this oil escapes into the air, when other eucalyptus trees sense it they begin producing the same oil to protect themselves. 

Eucalyptus trees talk to each other.

Their means of communication, oil, is one of the reasons these trees are so susceptible to fire, but all language is dangerous.

Phil and I, both waiters, both armed with Waiters Friend corkscrews, I deferred to Phil’s skills and asked him to open our bottle. Boys playing gentlemen, he asked me to pour. 

I poured. 

We sniffed. 

We tasted. 

We looked at each other. 

The label had not lied to us. There it was, a hint of eucalyptus, some of that oil had settled on the grapes at the right moment, the grapes had been handled expertly, that oil ended up talking to us, joining our table where the boss was flirting with the new kitchenhand and the usually tense chef was laughing along with everyone and the staff of the restaurant we’d occupied like cheerful bees were joining in the joy, adding their own jokes and japes. Everyone was spreading the good oil.

I fell silent. I’d read a lot about wine, drunk plenty, but I’d never felt a deeper understanding of it before. The incredible series of connections, thousands of years of improving grape stock, hundreds of years of improving wine making, vines carried carefully to a new world, that new world making the wine its own, that wine telling me of an ancient line of trees who spent their lives silently speaking to each other, speaking of insects and who knew what else? Do gum trees feel love? Do gum trees write poetry? Do they sing?

Phil turned to me, “you alright mate?”. 

I smiled, told him, “I’m fine, I’m listening, I’m drinking gum tree words”. 

Parkstreet

Ko-fi