Cherry Picking
At grandmother's we ascended
the tall stepladders
into the forking of branches and twigs
where a starscape of cherries
glinted obscurely
from the network of leaves.
Steadily picking, eating as we went,
we filled the wicker baskets.
Yet many weren't fit to be picked.
Blackbirds had come before us
cocky and hopping from branch to branch
pecking and slashing at the ripened fruit.
Now these were dark and wounded
ruptured worlds -- their wholeness gone.
I stared: useless and blackened,
they hung from the branches --
from below,
my father's voice
urged me on to work.
By what means or why come these thoughts
upon me now -- useless to speculate:
perhaps the truth of it:
nothing really goes (a sun-illumined
leaf outside)
or perhaps my tiny daughter
entering the room, her broad and placid face
so like my grandmother's (whom she never saw).
She blossoms now;
time fills us both from within.
Blackbirds, when you come,
hidden in the leaves of night,
rip swiftly with your razor beaks
the feather-light soul
from the flesh that rots;
bear me beneath your spreading wing
to heavens unimagined,
karmicaly ripe,
at last to be sweet
in the mouth of the void.
At grandmother's we ascended
the tall stepladders
into the forking of branches and twigs
where a starscape of cherries
glinted obscurely
from the network of leaves.
Steadily picking, eating as we went,
we filled the wicker baskets.
Yet many weren't fit to be picked.
Blackbirds had come before us
cocky and hopping from branch to branch
pecking and slashing at the ripened fruit.
Now these were dark and wounded
ruptured worlds -- their wholeness gone.
I stared: useless and blackened,
they hung from the branches --
from below,
my father's voice
urged me on to work.
By what means or why come these thoughts
upon me now -- useless to speculate:
perhaps the truth of it:
nothing really goes (a sun-illumined
leaf outside)
or perhaps my tiny daughter
entering the room, her broad and placid face
so like my grandmother's (whom she never saw).
She blossoms now;
time fills us both from within.
Blackbirds, when you come,
hidden in the leaves of night,
rip swiftly with your razor beaks
the feather-light soul
from the flesh that rots;
bear me beneath your spreading wing
to heavens unimagined,
karmicaly ripe,
at last to be sweet
in the mouth of the void.