Blackberry Picking

The race between the frost and the late sunshine is being run hard in my little garden. The blackberries are glossy, but still a day or two away from sweetness: the frost is forecast for the approaching full moon.

I thought of Seamus Heaney’s disquieting poem “Blackberry Picking “ where he is acutely aware of the childish desire to hoard all sweet things along with the adult recognition of the transience of life.

Poets can spoil everything by always showing us the skull beneath the skin.

...the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

……..

Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry Picking” from Opened Ground: Selected poems 1966-1996