Sestina
for Blackberry Season
Now the
blackberries are ripe for picking.
This is
the year we didn't cut them back
so they've
spread to cover the fence.
Responding
to the August sun
they send
out thorny branches thick with fruit
reminding
us how pleasure flirts with pain.
At
breakfast I see them through the kitchen pane
and
knowing the cool gray hours are best for picking,
I choose
the largest bowl to hold the fruit,
intending
to bring the purple treasures back
before
they are obscured by the glare of the sun
in my
eyes. I wander toward the fence
that
borders the garden. (That other fence
between us
is more than wood or wire.) I push away
the pain
of
remembering how we were together in the sun
of other
Augusts, your hands gently picking
berries,
your words crushing me to the ground. I want you back
in spite
of it. I tell you the fruit
of love
was worth the brambles. Reaching for the fattest fruit
I thrust
myself into the thorns that hide the fence
letting
them wound me, not holding back
even when
my blood mingles with the berries. I want this pain.
Our love
was like that, picking
our way
through tangles with the sun
blinding
us. In spite of the August sun
there is
still some hard green fruit
that
clings to the branch, resists picking.
Like you,
it will never soften or yield. I wish this fence
with its
berries were gone; I would gladly give up the pain
and
pleasure of this task. Now the bowl is full. I bring it back
to the
kitchen. My mind settles back
into daily
matters. The sun
through
the window warms me, eases the pain
of memory.
I think how this final fruit
of summer
will make a pie, how the fence
must be
mended, the vines cut back after the last picking.
I have
come back to my senses. Not everything we plant bears fruit.
There is
nothing under the sun that will bring down the fence,
the links
of pleasure and pain. What matters is not the harvest but the picking.