Blackberry Picking

Here is an image that's archetypal autumn: hedgerow blackberries from green to pink, through crimson to ripe blue-black, every stage of ripening all in the same small cluster. And the biggest, best and ripest bunches are always out of reach, high up behind nettles and cobwebs, seeking the sun.

Sometimes, when an excellent poet has already touched wonderfully on a subject, I find it impossible to write my own poem. Seamus Heaney's poem (below) is one of those poems.  Once read, it won't leave my brain to allow fresh thoughts (other than fruit-crumble-and-custard). As it's already 'out there' in the public demain, on PoemHunterdotcom and other such sites, where anyone can copy and paste it, and as the wonderful Irish poet is sadly a member of the Dead Poets' Society already, I feel it's OK to share the whole poem with you here.

Blackberry Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Seamus Heaney

Here's a link where you can hear Heaney reading his poem.

(Fond as I am of the poem, I'd love to ask the poet why those children of whom he was one never took their jamjars of fruit home. Even before the days of fridges, I'd have thought their mums might have stewed the fruit or made jam.)