Quince Paste Poem by Douglas Scotney

If that other name for sherry, sack,
came not from the Latin for dry, siccus,
but from Latin's sack, saccus -
because the grapes were strained through a bag -
there might be other names for quince paste.

It's not so much of a stretch
for quince paste to be muslin -
or Mosul, the town in Iraq,
then Mesopotamia,
after which the gauzy cloth was named.

With cause,
within some shores
(not those of my Chambers though)
quince paste
could be gauze.