August Blackberries

The children are picking blackberries
     and so am I,
basking in the sticky haze of out-reached brambles,
tempting and wooing those with open mouths
          and patient eyes to its side.

I am surrounded by dark deliciousness,

lost in a wilderness of simple joy,
     everything just as it should be,
the blackbirds singing with ease
while bees find heather blossoms
to make sweet what good they have,
just as I reach into the prickles, glad,
     hands bleeding berry and blood,
to fill these hours with a heavy harvest.

          Each berry is a heart,
exuding fecund life that carries on,
each summer's end a frenzied beat in time
until the next cycle gives out its
                         blessings.

                         These little gifts
hum with the sun, perfected
     by a thousand warm rays
     and the wild welsh wind that
whips across this ancient mountain side,
     once a glacier's path to sleep,
now a grassland of gorse and heather,
     broom and blackthorn.

The rain has been kind and also fierce,
     awakening the earth to her softer side,
          and I had forgotten the delight
     of standing quiet with ten thousand fruits,
listening to each murmured story

     rise up from the roots like sap in spring,

singing the earth and me into deeper life.

I cannot forget this moment
as life holds out both hands,

all bright with child-like pleasure.