Blackberries
We come back with our stained hands
and sagging bag. It’s something to do with the War
that makes her send us out to pick fruit
from the autumn hedgerows. A once-empty larder,
a too-small piece of garden, and she’ll measure it again
and again, will never ever have enough.
Now we are off again – she waves us away at the door –
to stain our hands till the nails are blue-black,
the moons come bright white out from the cuticles.
She wants us to bring back all the fruit from the lane
and the abandoned brickfield and from behind
the recreation ground: her hands make the journey.
She wants us to pick and pick all afternoon
until there’s not one blackberry left, all the briars
robbed and dangling as if lighter, carefree.
And a little bit of whatever she lost
will be regained, boiling in trickles of dark blue sugar,
saved and sweet, cooling slowly there in the pan.
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