A Table in the Vineyard

The table ran the length of the gravel terrace, twenty-four places set before the frost had fully lifted. Nobody had planned the menu. The cellar gave a white, the garden gave the last of the chicory, a neighbour arrived with a pot of beans and stayed for the afternoon. The wind moved the cloth; the cloth moved the glasses; nobody minded. A long lunch in a vineyard in winter is a photograph that takes four hours to make and four seconds to read. The light changes course with every course. By the time the cheese arrived, the whole table had turned the colour of the stone it stood on. What I took home was not a single perfect frame but the sequence — the way a table rearranges itself around appetite, and the way the light agrees to follow.