Berrypicking with Sam
He offers me half-bruised bundles
in purple-stained palms, imploring me—
babbling ahhh and mm-mmm
mm-mmm—to play my part, parting
my lips, and to swallow them down.
They coat my tongue, softened with
sunray and swollen with squall—
black raspberries growing wild,
sweet and sour. Above all I want
to warn him about the thorns—
see my two hands reaching out
before pulling back. Want to say,
Things can be hard. Want to tell
him I have known my share of
suffering. But he reaches in faster
than I can hope to stop him, already
leaning so deeply into this world,
angling into the weave at the edge
of the woods, that today if not
tomorrow I choose to believe it:
that this instinct, too, is my offspring,
runs strong in my line—that all of this
bramble is more than enough to feed
us, this matter constantly mattering,
living and dying, all ripening
here on the rims of things, over
and over—the fruit, and the thorns,
and the juice of it all running down.
This poem is from the chapbook Edge Habitat by Elizabeth Moore (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/edge-habitat-by-elizabeth-moore/
Elizabeth Moore is the author of The Truth and the Life (Alternative Book Press), and her poetry has appeared in Pangyrus, Print Funeral, Boston Literary Magazine, and Mass Poetry’s The Hard Work of Hope series. She lives with her husband and two sons in Massachusetts.
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