Blackberries and The Moon

In the back of my parents’ home is a creek where I used to play with my brother and friends.  It was never deep enough to swim, but we’d often go wading, build forts around there, sneak across to the other neighbor’s back property and goof around there.  When I went to check it out the other day, I was a little discouraged.  It’s become so overgrown that I couldn’t even see the water for all the lilies and blackberry bushes.

The lilies were a surprise, but the blackberries certainly were not.  These perennial brambles are the weed that can conquer the earth more effectively than any army I can imagine.  They start off small; a vine here, a root there, and next year half of your fence and its surrounding area has been swallowed by this thorny monster.

Exterminating the blackberry bushes is an exercise in determination and patience.  I have gone through more pairs of gloves pruning, uprooting and pulling these vines away from where they’re not wanted.  One year, in a fit of irritation, we decided to light the bushes on fire and save ourselves a lot of grief.  The flames rose 10 feet, the smoke rose to unprecedented heights, the heat was incredible, and about 30 feet worth of the fence was cleared.  That was a good day.

For a time after I moved out, my parents let a friend keep his goats out back, and apparently those goats ate those suckers to the ground.  Those animals would have been the best deterrent they ever had if they weren’t constantly escaping into other neighbors’ yards.  Well, go figure.

Considering how much time and effort my family has put in trying to make sure that the vines don’t cover our house the way the brambles did Sleeping Beauty’s palace, I tend to forget just how wonderful those berries taste.  If you can handle getting your hands cut up a bit (and this is inevitable; those thorns are many more than those on roses and can be meaner, too) picking blackberries is one of the most enjoyable activities in the world.  They taste wonderful off the vine; they explode with flavor and each berry seems to have its own personality.  One is sweet, another tart, and none of them lasting long enough.  My hands turn red from picking so many to fit in my mouth and I’m sure that my teeth wished that I’d brushed them sooner than I did that night.

They also make the best jams and pies.  In my frustration with keeping them down, I’d forgotten that blackberry pie just might be my favorite pie in the world.  If there was only a way to cultivate them without the constant need of shears.

Oh, well.  I assuage my irritation by remembering that I no longer have to worry about anymore.  <knocks on wood>

                        ***

A few unexpected things happened over my vacation.  A few of them came from my sisters and their friends.  Just recently, one of them had the bright idea to write all over their thighs with nail polish.  That took until the next day to come off, with some serious pain on their side and a horrible stink in the room for the rest of us to endure.

I haven’t really had a quiet moment since arriving.  I exact my revenge by making fun of them on this blog.

Unfortunately, not all of the surprises have been so ephemeral.  On first arriving home, I learned that a girl I knew had committed suicide not too long before.  Then, last week, another woman that my family was friends with passed away because of old age.  These deaths being so close together, it’s given me a lot to think on.

I really didn’t know either woman very well.  If I spoke to them for more than five minutes at a time, I can’t recall the circumstance.  Yet, it has crossed my mind several times after hearing both women’s stories, that no matter whether the death was long or slow coming, whether it was expected by their families or not, departing this world is never easy and often painful.  If we could choose how mortality works, I’m sure everybody would make some serious changes.

It reminded me of a poem I started a couple weeks before.  It’s quite obvious at the time I began that I was thinking about unfulfilled love, but as I considered more, I realized that this is also about everything we wish we could change but are powerless to do, because in reality, it is impossible.  I don’t know that this would ever provide comfort, but in some small way, I hope it can show some understanding.

                        ***

The evening now draws ever near
And as I looked at the sky so clear,
I asked the heavens for one small boon:
I begged them to let me kiss the moon.

The moon is truly a maiden fair.
I see her face and can only stare
At the beauty in which she is dressed;
Of all the ladies I’ve met, she is best.

I think of her as I go to bed,
Thinking of things I ought to have said.
I would ask her if to me she’d wed,
But I know that not for me is her light shed.

I’ve often thought if I could kiss the moon
That it would be just a simple boon,
A favor from one I hold so dear,
Yet she’d rather be up there and not here,

No, not here with me on lowly earth,
This place of sorrow, ne’er of mirth.
My lady instead will dance, and dance alone
Around the world, dance over our bones.

Tonight, I go out and cannot see her face.
She’s hidden, ridden to her secret place,
A home for which there is no room
For this shamed and hopeless groom.

Now I see from this dream I must veer
For the woman has made it, oh, so clear
That I will ne’er be granted this boon:
That I should kiss my love, the moon.