Poem for Thursday and Larsen Lake Blueberries

Blueberries 

By James Lasdun 

I'm talking to you old man.

Listen to me as you step inside this garden

to fill a breakfast bowl with blueberries

ripened on the bushes I'm planting now,

twenty years back from where you're standing.

It's strictly a long-term project—first year

pull off the blossoms before they open,

second year let them flower, watch the bees

bobbing in every bonnet,

but don't touch the fruit till year three,

and then only sample a handful or two...

Old man I'm doing this for you!

You know what they say about blueberries:

blood-cleansing, mood-lifting memory-boosters;

every bush a little fountain of youth

sparkling with flavonoids, anthocyanin...

I've spent all summer clearing brush

sawing locust poles for the frames,

digging in mounds of pine needles, bales of peat moss—

I thought I'd do it while I still could.

You can do something for me in turn:

think about the things an old man should;

things I've shied away from, last things.

Care about them only don't care too

(you'll know better than I do what I mean

or what I couldn't say, but meant).

Reconcile, forgive, repent,

but don't go soft on me; keep the faith,

our infidels' implicit vow:

"not the hereafter but the here and now..."

Weigh your heart against the feather of truth

as the Egyptians did, and purge its sin,

but for your own sake, not your soul's.

And since the only certain

eternity's the one that stretches backward,

look for it here inside this garden:

Blueray, Bluecrop, Bluetta, Hardy Blue;

little fat droplets of transubstantiate sky,

each in its yeast-misted wineskin, chilled in dew.

This was your labor, these are the fruits thereof.

Fill up your bowl old man and bring them in.

-------- 

I had a fairly quiet Thursday in beautiful weather, probably the last for several days since the weekend is supposed to be in the 90s -- miserably hot. The great blue herons were already holding their wings out in the heart-shaped cooling position and we saw a little green heron, the first in many weeks. The beach had bacteria warning signs up, but that didn't stop people from swimming. We had leftover pizza for dinner so I wouldn't be late for my Thursday night chat call -- all the day's relevant baseball had already ended, the Orioles not well. 

We watched this week's Strange New Worlds, which was the strangest yet, and a bunch irritated me, but the internet is convinced the episode was meant to be a direct Gaza analogy and Evil People Interfered, which now has me liking its overarching theme about propaganda and how people who don't use their brains get swallowed whole by it. Then we watched the first episode of season two of Peacemaker, hahaha -- the erasure of the Snyderverse! The orgy! Flamboyantly bisexual John Cena! At the end of blueberry season, some pics from the beginning: