Blackberry Eating by Galway Kinnell
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 or broughamed,
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.
♥ ♥ ♥
from Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2001), copyright © Galway Kinnell 2001, via poetryarchieve.org where used by permission of the author and Bloodaxe Books Ltd.
