blackberry-picking



the following poem interpolates the eponymous one that i first read as a high school freshman. sheltered by trim lawns and topiarian trees, i had never picked blackberries before. only last summer did i notice their brambles, sudden awareness suffusing that decade-old assignment with new meaning. what made such an unrelatable tale so salient to a greener me? i don't know, but, to commemorate this poem that somehow still matters, i rewired it around my own blackberry story.



late july, coast absent rain and sun,

i alighted on blackberries with a ripe veneer.

an acolyte, i did not pick glossy purple clots,

but others, reddish, purplish, still sour and taut.

you guided my fingers to flesh bloated and explosive

as seared sungolds: summer's blood was in it.

nature's gushers worth every nick on arms bare and

unprepared. then dexterity set in and that eureka

coaxed me back brambleward, my maw the lone container,

where i wedded poem to practice ten years tardy.

up town sidewalks that refracted my kid blocks

we trekked and i picked until the novelty faded,

until my sloshing stomach tapped out, sated,

with memory of morning mouthfuls of blueberries surfacing

woozy as a buoy. my hands faltered, fluttered sheepishly

to my sides, awakening to your kind indulgence.



we knew our littoral digs held little space for hoarding,

in which we'd pledged to squirrel away lingcod and

the other berries, glutting on our fridge space.

reality started sinking in, too. away from the shrub

i recalled our schedule, shipshape and unrelenting.

i didn't quite "fe[el] like crying." still, leaving was sad.

i wished to linger in late literature-turned-learning.

next time, i promised, rueing maybe not.