Some days I’m not sure I’m even a writer. Writers are like that.
But Monday I took a small carton of blackberries to my friend and she wrote on a social media post: “Yum. Home grown blackberries with a little cream and raw sugar. Thank you, my sweet fruit fairy…”
Along with the blackberries, I shared a little ditty with her. She is a poet, a real one, but the fruit fairy was unashamed.
His Best Thing
I think blackberries are my dad’s best thing. Better than best, maybe best-est. Perhaps most best.
His briar patch is a twenty-foot arbor on the southwest side of our house.
He built it the spring after we all moved to the new place.
It might be a pergola, or maybe a trellis, but he named it Arbor and it stuck,
The propping place for fruit-heavy branches and gravity-driven berries on tender vine tips.
He stretched galvanized two by four-inch farm fence through its middle and across its top,
Secured in spaces on four-by-fours,
Sunk deep in the ground
To the credit of a post-hole digger he brought from the farm.
He offers them one non-negotiable itinerary–up and out–
And they don’t mind going there,
But old habits of reach and arch point them groundward.
They see by his wire that all they’ll get is a proper path built for their own good.
They repent, and bow to the farmer’s convenience.
I collect at the bottom. Think I don’t know what they say about low-hanging fruit?
I’ll always pick it first, unimpressed by gossip.
Sometimes, easy-does-it hides big treasures.
Besides, they contradicted themselves when they said
“Don’t step into a briar where a snake might lurk to strike.”
Once I saw one in my dad’s blackberries.
Skinny grass-green Flash tripped over my flip-flop, made me laugh.
To fill my basket takes six passes.
Once each side that-away looking down,
One this-away looking up (which makes four).
Two more trips, one each direction,
Flat-footing a rusted vintage chair, non-wobbly against a thick post.
I figured the top gatherings shouldn’t count for more than two passes,
Although–The twenty-steps afoot do require two moves of the ladder for each side,
Six mounts and dismounts, too.
If I wanted, I could count as trips the shorter jaunts between the makeshift scaffolding.
I could. The truth is these are my berries now.
I decide—to pluck or to leave,
Jam or jelly, canned or frozen, cobbler or double-crust, fresh or later.
Are they sweet this year? I take the largest one, let the taste linger.
No, my berries are tart, not at all like my dad’s, nothing to remind me of him.
Some say to stand on a rusty chair instead of a stepstool is to welcome a fall.
Sometimes, often, I think they’re right.
Picking across the top takes practice and balance,
And vision adapted to a peripheral gaze across a close horizon.
Within my reach waits a sturdy brace,
Sunk deep in the ground
To the credit of a post-hole digger he brought from the farm.
On the Ravine 