RASPBERRY PICKING

 

summer saw me as a boy
tweaking the fine-haired berry
from the slightly thorny shrub
I felt them float their juices on my fingertip
those tiny polyped
sweet-milked fruits
which gently popped the balsa
with a delicate blush of stain
the smallest dollar box
accumulated to a modesty
of rosy-tainted wood
as kneeling like an infant-animal hunger
I am brought
lower on the cane
to areolas of aspire on the bottom branch
where things are shadow-grown
and under-leafed
though swelling still within the warm aromas
of the earth’s upvapouring heat

I roll them candied to themselves
as with a sticky pluck
they yield and let the green
throb back
as if with sparrow lift
to measure off the loss of song
and when I’ve rounded out
the value of the day’s desire
the grackle’s gluttony of lovely work
appears unbloused and in a field-end frame
as flavoured light
the succubus of beetle-married dark
transforms into a seven-vowelled kiss
which says my name in every living thing