Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine." [View all]

"The boys bent, smiling. They picked the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly on crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun. ... So, plucked carefully, in sacks, the dandelions were carried below. The cellar dark glowed with their arrival. The wine press stood open, cold. A rush of flowers warmed it. ... The golden tide, the essence of this fine, fair month ran, then rushed from the spout, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom. Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.

"Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in your glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the seasons in your veins by tilting glass to lip and tilting summer in. Nothing else in the world would do but the pure waters which had been summoned from the lakes far away and the sweet fields of grassy dew on early morning, lifted to the open sky, carried in laundered clusters nine hundred miles, brushed with wind, electrified with high voltage, and condensed upon cool air. This water, falling, raining, gathered yet more of the heavens in its crystals. Taking something of the east wind and the west wind and the north wind and the south, the water made rain and the rain, within this hour of rituals, would be well on its way to wine. Douglas ran with the dipper. He plunged it deep in the rain barrel.

"Even Grandma, when snow was swirling fast, dizzying the world, blinding windows, stealing breath from gasping mouths, even Grandma, one day in February, would vanish to the cellar. ... Yes, even Grandma, drawn to the cellar of winter for a June adventure, might stand alone and quietly, in secret conclave with her own soul and spirit, as did Grandfather and Father and Uncle Pert, or some of the boarders, communing with a last touch of a calendar long departed, with the picnics and the warm rains and the smell of fields of wheat and new popcorn and bending hay. Even Grandma, repeating and repeating the fine and golden words, even as they were said now in this moment when the flowers were dropped into the press, as they would be repeated every winter for all the white winters in time. Saying them over and over on the lips, like a smile, like a sudden patch of sunlight in the dark. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine."