Hungers

The puppies are restless this morning,

Wrestling and bouncing and whining,

Hungry for the walk they can’t have.

Hermina’s rain bands reached us

Last night in the middle of REM sleep.

My dreams played cymbals

For the thunder that shook the windows,

Shook Moose from his rest.

Pillow in hand, I sat next to his crate,

Singing the songs I had sung to my children

When it was dark and they were afraid.

Lewis Farms up the road

In Rocky Point, which is neither rocky nor pointed,

Lets you pick your own

Strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries

For $3.25 a pound, a bargain

Price for fresh fruit.

The car takes you off the exit

To boundless rows of furrowed mounds

Of low plantings ready for picking.

Blackberries grow on racing tendrils

Laced with too many stinging thorns

And too many memories of plucking

Wild blackberries in boggy gulleys

By the highway, watching for snakes,

Bearing the hard gusts of semis

That rushed by,

To ever pay

For the privilege of eating

Something so seedy and tart.

Red fruit fills the first basket,

The first flat and others follow

Blue fruit fills the first basket,

The first flat and too many follow.

Still you keep on

Picking these bargains, paying the price

With a popping back, twisting from

Stooping, thigh and ass muscles aching,

Sneaking the occasional berry

To taste for ripeness until the flavor

Turns bitter.

Still, the plucking and tasting keep on,

Because now it’s all about the picking,

Basket after basket,

Flat after flat,

Row after row.

Row beyond row.

I think of the path

The dogs and I take

Every morning and evening exactly.

One point six miles precisely.

Manicured houses like mausoleums

Faces of persons I nod to but do not know

My unquenched hunger,

When it’s dark and I am afraid,

To plow under

The endless circle of the neighborhood.

Path after path,

Street after street,

Road beyond road,

And sow them with blackberry vines, sharp and wild.