berries on an elder's brain

berries
on
an
elder's
brain

---

[b]lackberries
[b]ig as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
[e]bon in the hedges, fat
[w]ith blue-red juices. [t]hese they squander
on my fingers.
I had not asked for such ...; they must love me.
                                                                                ---Plath
---

I jump forward for a minute or two to
a futuretime being the belated editing
date of July 20  ...

and having, an hour or more
ago, completed a round of raspberry picking---
slim, because most of these berries are
considerably past their sweetest prime.

I find myself on the broad cusp between postprime
wild black raspberries and markedly preprime feral
blackberries.

lest you scurry past the above sentence too quickly,
let me iterate: notable differences stand
between wild black raspberries and blackberries---
as to size, time of ripeness, how they attach
to their bases at tips of perky stems, the shapes/
shades of their leaves, and so forth.

out of the many thousands of light green-hard
blackberries crowding some of the raspberry bushes
at purfled backyard lawn fringes, I've seen exactly
three---as of yesterday---that bore ripening
coloration.

and even those come hard and knotty, shrinky tight-
fisty; and although dark or darkening, they've not yet
arrived at their treasured pearled black.

they have a ways to go before bulging into
and past the swarthy colors of bruise while softening
and sweetening themselves enough for my mouth-grasping,
teeth-charging, and internal tongue-lashing attentions.

---------

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
                                                                           ---Seamus Heaney
---------

on grampa's and grandma's western oregon farm,
nature's bountiful event in august was blackberries.

they everywhere thrived, their thorns exceedingly hooky,
dangerous, and shockingly painful to tumble into,
being---when it did happen; and happen it did!---
a perilously procellous experience not to be
forgotten ...

---------

Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
                                                                        ---Seamus Heaney
---------

nor quickly forgiven.

but the berries plumped rich with fruited sweets,
and they happily forced my prickled teeth surfaces
to a sandpapery squeakiness on sampling.

when at last they sweetened, they were very sweet;
but when they yet soured, they were very sour ...

and caustic enough to make the twin spots high
in my neck, those on left and right sides
in the indentation above and behind the curves
of my flinching jawbone, spasm sharply.

just recalling this, now roughly 60 years ago,
is sufficient to trigger a faint achiness there---
and to start mouth to watering with a detectably
tiny metallic tang to taunt hopeful taste buds
awake.

puckishly.

---------

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfield, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes.
                                                                          --Seamus Heaney
---------

then later, when they came too pasture-abundant
to imagine possible, and their smells swelled like scents
of the sourest of wines, and then on to a more
advanced spoilage, I never objected to the range
and gallimaufry of odors.

and though I might wrinkle my curiously offended
nose at times, and even catch my breath in a moment
of surprise, I truly did like everything
about them.

---------

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-gray fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying.
                                                                       ---Seamus Heaney
---------

although the raspberries in this nooky corner
of my city now linger, this late July
of 2002, at high-percentage rotting stage---
and there are a lot fewer of them than those remembered
berries on grampa's farm---I can smell their breeze-borne
fragrances and time travel-ride them back,
like a piepoudre who packs nothing to peddle,
to highly valued and fondly recalled small-child
berrying events with grandma or aunt wilma jean,
or any adult who would invite or join in with me.

on rare occasions, it
was with my mother,
who was ordinarily too busy
to spare the time for it.

but the men in my family,
hardly ever;
if it happened even once,
I don't recall it.

---------

It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
                                                                     ---Seamus Heaney