For the Love of a Berry

by Anna Ruiz

I have always loved blueberries,
round, plump and so...
perfectly true blue,
(perhaps because the colour is
a shade of night
I remember
we danced
a moist tango
of hugs and kisses, of arms and legs,
tangled as if caught in a fisher’s net),

the trouble with blueberries is in order to
pick them from a bush in
your own backyard, a cloth must
be draped so that creatures do not
find that ripeness, that blueness
in the bush,
and I am not so selfish as to not
share the gifts of earth,

I think I love strawberries more
so red and sweet, growing wild in the
forest, small patches on the ground,
never quite the same as the ones
purchased in the market, (I know for I
have so loved
that last strawberry I tasted as I freefell
from that precarious ledge when I let
go of satisfying any taste, can I ever tell
you how that tasted? can anyone know
how sweet that melancholy is that can
never be spoken of...)

I love cherries even more,
the sweet darkness and blood of red,
or small and the colour of tartness,
I can climb a cherry tree and have
enough for all the winged creatures,
the bushy-tailed squirrel, to share
with me, besides the ones way up top,
closest to the sun, I’ll never climb, the
branches too high or too thin for me,
(but I have tasted cherries and I have
been picked by the greatest of Lovers
and I have been tasted by them,
leaving one another, one by one,
for tastes unknown,)

I think I love raspberries the most,
especially with chocolate, so decadent
so ebullient in my joy of being ripe,
growing wild in the heart of me,

and I,
like the berries of the field, like the
wind sailing through pine trees,
naked with promise,
clothe myself
in the stark whiteness of a lily,
asleep in the sun.