Of Art, Love, and picking berries

while gathering wineberries and

anticipating

the sun warm sweet juice
as I mash the the soft red fruit between my teeth and
feel the tiny seeds wedge down in the canyons of my molars,
or
the snowy winter day when the sky is grey with cloud and the air white with snowflake
the loud and rewarding ping as the toaster oven tells me
my sour dough bread is toasted,
I will spread the jam over the melting butter that seeps through the big air pockets formed when the dough was rising, and down onto the butcher block
 putting the warm bread to my mouth, I will crunch into that taste of summer sweet and tart
 an archive of the summer sun and sky and all the colors of the garden that are now faded and buried under the snow that won't melt for 2 weeks and then be covered again, two days later by the next snowy day.

Moving the thorny vines aside to get to the darker richer redder almost purple berries,
the ones the bright red cardinal and his grayer colored lover missed, or left, when they were startled by sound of the screen door,

the vines only protection pierces the skin of my finger, 

the finger I use to strike the Y,U,J,H,N&M

but I only wince
and continue on in my desperate desire for the sweet and deeply red, almost purple, fruit
knowing that the thorn will fester there, in me,
and that later I will be desperate to get it out, bothered by it when ever I try to write, or pick up something, or have to be polite and listen to the same old story over again ,or
am trying to sleep

The moment of biting into that wet sweet warm yielding berry,

it's juice spreading over my tongue, my brain lost to the song my taste buds are singing

comes at a price
the thorn in my finger, the constant awareness of discomfort, festering,

swelling, an inflamed redness surrounding that tiny bit of alien thing under my skin

To remove it means digging deep, probing
further pain and discomfort

I must look close, I must put on my eye glasses
because my eyes are no longer young

and my vision not so clear,

I must look
thru those old eyes,

thru those glasses

thru the magnifying glass

in order to see that tiny sliver, that thorn, that invader of my person

that has sounded the alarms of resistance and defense

thru this glass
thru this glass and
thru eyes straining

I can see

the thorn, the moment it pierced my skin

I was happy then,
until then,
smiling,

excited, anticipating the sweet sensations, not only of the biting down
and breaking open of the

sweet dark berry

but

of the discovery of that
just ripe enough,
just red enough,
not yet picked off by a hungry bird who might not

be as particular, might not be as delighted at having found that just right fruit,

happy in
the search,
thru the brambles, pushing back the underbrush, bending to look under leaves

hastily wiping away at spider webs that stickily cover my face
and then trying to calm myself
so as not to hurt the spiders,
who were trying to catch something other than me
 and now have to rebuild their webs as if I,
hurricane Sandy,
had blown and washed over their beach side cottages

The thorn must come out,
nothing will be possible until the thorn is removed and
the discomfort removed and
the distraction removed and
the swelling removed and
the memories of the summer sun removed and
the joy of the sight of the deep red fruit removed and
the wonder over the spider with the long green legs removed and 

the complaint of the cardinal being kept from her breakfast removed

from within me

With the thorn gone, the fevered skin calmed,
the constant ache subsides

and what remains is the memory of the sun warmed & sweet wineberry in summer

I am only slightly aware of the sharp thorny consequence of my lust,

and I am free to go back into the thicket again.