Rain and heat ... what Robert made me think of ...

for a psalm is call and response.

Berries

by Kathryn Gessner

Damn hungry.  The state of summer.
Always far from home when it hit.
I learned to forage, chew sassafras,
cup berries in my palms.
Turned itchy by nightfall,
poured calamine on my legs.

Some long stretch of the path,
nettles stinging my ankles,
secured it: I no longer get poisoned
by ivy or oak. I can stand in it.

Wineberries, sticky and delectable as they are,
are full of competing insects.
Pushing through to the moist ripe ones,
small bloody etchings appear on my shins.
Mulberries have no thorns
but I must walk a long way to the tree.

Whenever I want something, and it’s hot,
I want mulberries. My grandmother’s tree
grew over the driveway, stained my feet,
my lips and hands, and purpled the leather
of worn sandals.
 
If I stayed long enough beneath the tree
all the others would fade away.
I was the last picker, solitary,
tugging the branches, reaching up,
nothing but twilight handfuls
carrying me back to my bed.

 

Comments

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

I fear I may be of no help here, since I'm she-of-the-terse verse these days. But this seems almost like two poems to me--the poem which explores the nettly-thorny part of berry picking and picking mulberry fruit. Perhaps numbering the sections of the poem? The first two strophes as I; the final three as II?

[Heather Miller]

Wow, this poem got me to scratching. Are wineberries the same as blackberries? Anyhow, I love the physical feeling of this poem, and I think what's happening to throw the rhythm off a bit is just the getting-started mechanics. Maybe a little trimming will bring it tighter - more terse, to use Sally Jo's word. How 'bout "the state of hungry summer" to start, then into the itchings and the berries. You can delete the second stanza, go straight into wineberries. Then delete the first sentence/line of the fourth stanza - going directly into "My grandmother's tree..." This would rope in both wineberries and mulberries in keeping with the summer hunger, et al. And I do love those twilight handfuls "carrying me back to my bed." Magnificent!