Wineskin in the Smoke

  • Series: Summer Psalter
  • by: David Crosby 07/18/10

Maybe it's because I am in the possession of a small clay pot that was covered with soot when I claimed it. That pot, unearthed from an Incan grave, sat on a shelf in a little house 10,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains in northern Peru. A fire burned inside almost continually, and the smoke crept up the walls and across the ceiling, sneaking out through cracks and crevasses.

Imagine a leather pouch hanging in the tent of a Bedouin. The heat and smoke curl around the top of that tent, and the wineskin dries and cracks.

Sometimes people feel like wineskins in the smoke.