Season of fruition

© harrington

Welcome. Thanks for stopping. If you look carefully, you can see both maroon and green berries on the black chokeberry bush in the picture above. The bush next to this one is full of dark red berries. I'm both excited and a little apprehensive about the upcoming harvest and rendering the fruits into preserves. Will it work? Will we enjoy the results? I have no idea what they'll taste like after they've been subjected to heat and  quantities of pectin equal to the juice rendered from the berries. September is supposed to be prime time for Aronia melanocarpa. The race between humans and other animals to see who gets to harvest the fruit will, I suspect, be a close one. The local deer have already been helping themselves to the lower branches of the pear tree. The local bear has been checking out the bird feeders' sunflower seeds. Either or both may find chokeberries appealing and I've also noticed the local robins casting covetous eyes toward the bushes. We'll learn about Aronia while we wait for the apple trees (safely ensconced behind their fence?) to start to produce fruit, assuming we continue to prevail over the cedar-apple rust. Do you forage? Are you a locavore? Which guidebooks have you used? Are they helpful? Thanks for listening. Come again when you can. Rants, raves and reflections served here daily (for the most part). In honor of our transiting seasons, I hope this poem brings you the pleasure it brought to me.

The Last Days of Summer Before the First Frost

By Tim Bowling

Here at the wolf’s throat, at the egress of the howl,

all along the avenue of deer-blink and salmon-kick

where the spider lets its microphone down

into the cave of the blackberry bush—earth echo,

absence of the human voice—wait here

with a bee on your wrist and a fly on your cheek,

the tiny sun and tiny eclipse.

It is time to be grateful for the breath

of what you could crush without thought,

a moth, a child’s love, your own life.

There might never be another chance.

How did you find me, the astonished mother says

to her four-year-old boy who’d disappeared

in the crowds at the music festival.

I followed my heart, he shrugs,

so matter-of-fact you might not see

behind his words

(o hover and feed, but not too long)

the bee trails turning to ice as they’re flown.

Source: Poetry (April 2011).