Blackberries

My hand stained in blackberry juice from an afternoon of exploration.

 

The dragonfly said dance.

She lit on my finger.

Breathe the earth’s blue air and dance

through brambles, eat blackberries

until your lips purple with wild sweet juices.

Sniff honeysuckle and apple blossoms.

Watch petals fall and remember them.

Then up on cobwebbed wings

she hovered before me and whirled

across the ebony pond.

 

So I dance to the music of wild musicians,

to the songs of coyotes, thrushes and whales;

I sway in the wind with black-eyed Susans,

sniff milkweed, wild roses and mint.

I pick berries from thorny green brambles

and climb tangled arbors for grapes

until my lips turn purple and tingle.

I love what I love

and dream when I’m done

of dancing with a dragonfly

across an ebony pond.

- Holly Fordyce

Done