August 20: Berry-picking

ripe blackberries falling

into my stained fingers

words from your lips

 

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July 24: Haiku on Hatchet Mountain

This afternoon I led a haiku hike up Hatchet Mountain in Hope (such alliteration!) for Coastal Mountains Land Trust and Sweet Tree Arts. Two familes, including four children, three adults, and two dogs, and I walked up the hill with stops along the way to compose short poems. Highlights included a singing Scarlet Tanager, a porcupine climbing a tree with surprising speed (trying to get away from us), views of the Camden Hills and all the way to the ocean, and lots of blackberries and raspberries to eat along the way.

Who can write haiku
with all these blackberries
to pick and eat?

August 9: Blackberries

I led a writers' group up Beech Hill this afternoon, and, being writers, they wanted to know all sorts of interesting things: how my mother is doing (her friend Gail was in the group); what bird was making that noise (towhee); how one harvests blueberries (with rakes, by hand, back-breakingly); the names of various wildflowers in the fields (daisy fleabane was a favorite); what that lighthouse was (Indian Island Light outside Rockport harbor); the purpose of the stone circle overgrown with rugosa rose bushes in front of the stone hut (former bonfire pit), etc.

Being human, they also had their eyes open for ripe blueberries along the trail. Of course, since Coastal Mountains Land Trust hosted a public free pick this past weekend which was attended by hundreds of people also scanning the trailside for berries, pickings were slim. We did, however, come across many low vines loaded down with clusters of blackberries--lots of hard, unripe berries like little red fists.

I have a collection of poems about blackberries; among berries, they hold a special place in my heart for that reason (see my August 3, 2010 post). But what I enjoy most about all berries is eating them. These ruby red jewels will soon burgeon into juicy purple-black fruits. Perhaps the berry-loving cedar waxwings overhead were thinking that same thing. Who doesn't love a blackberry? (Or a blueberry, or a raspberry...) It occurs to me that the berries actually depend on that. They're not that enticing for nothing. Today's red knots of fruit tucked amid stalks of goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace were promises of what's soon to come.

It's all about seeds,
encouraging dispersal.
That's why they taste good.

September 20: On the Trail

Part of my day was spent tromping around various forested properties in Stockton Springs, Searsport, and Hope. At one stop, we hiked on an old logging road that now made a perfect trail through patches of dense deciduous forest mixed with stands of white pine that lent their strong fragrance to the crisp morning air. As we carefully stepped over a clump of blackberry bushes that were lying in disarray across the trail, my boss noted that a bear had probably made that mess while going after the berries. Further down the trail, I came across some scat filled with berry seeds that we agreed was that of either a bear or a large, berry-eating coyote. These were real woods. On the return walk, while paying attention to my footing, it seemed like every few yards a woolly bear caterpillar was curled up among the leaf litter. That time of year.

The clear blue sky, a few patches of early red maple leaves, and, once, a bald eagle soaring overhead made for some distraction from what was on the trail. But I was struck by how much could be seen by paying attention to what was right underfoot.

Already, red leaves
falling, animals thinking
of hibernation.

August 3: Blackberries and Poems

Hiking up Beech Hill in Rockport I noticed that the blackberries growing along the trail were red and ripening fast. I was reminded of one of my ongoing, slow-growing collections: blackberry poems. Over the years, I've accumulated my own personal anthology of poems that include blackberries as the subject or key image. The poets include Sylvia Plath, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mary Oliver and, inspired by aforementioned, myself. (I'll include a complete list below.)

There's something about blackberries that render them good subjects for poetry. Back in my grad school days, I probably would have tried to write an essay on the topic, describing how the staining black juice of the berries is irresistibly similar to ink, how the ephemeral ripeness of the fruit is the perfect metaphor for the fleeting joys of summer or life or a relationship. Or how plucking the delicious berries from amid the thorny bushes is the perfect metaphor for life or a relationship. You get the idea. Blackberries are quite literally food for (poetic) thought.

But these days, inspired by the discovery of a new blackberry poem or the sight of a real live blackberry patch, I simply re-read my collection, picking through the poems with pleasure, as if eating berries from a basket.

Photo by Brian Willson

Blackberries don't last.
But their purple ink lingers
in printed poems.


Blackberry Poem Anthology
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, section of "Aurora Leigh"
Robert Hass, "Meditation at Lagunitas"
Seamus Heaney, "Blackberry-Picking"
Jane Hirschfield, "August Day"
Elizabeth Hobbs, "Blackberry Picking"
Galway Kinnell, "Blackberry Eating"
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Blackberries"
Mary Oliver, "August" and "Blackberries"
Sylvia Plath, "Blackberrying"
Henry Taylor, "Blackberries," section from "Three Snapshots"
Jack Turner, "The Plan"
Allison Childs Wells, "In the Blackberry Patch"
Douglas Woodsum, "A Country Awakening," "Poem for Stephen," "Mental Health Diet," "Blackberry War," "Fourteener #301," "Fourteener #37," "Fourteener #28," and "The Black Way" (a poet friend who clearly shares my enthusiasm for the poetic potential of blackberries!)