Mom says August and September are special months because that’s when Great Uncle Roger’s blackberries ripen. And this year, I got to pick my own! Apparently I’m a very good picker because I only picked the ripe ones (although I did tend to favor the big ones). And I only ate one. Honest.
Blackberry Eating
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry—eating in late September.
by Galway Kinnell
