Love Makes Me a Blackberry Pie
For John on our 16th wedding anniversary August 31, 1991
Berries this afternoon in the sun
pulled warm into our buckets from long thorny whips
purpling and pricking our fingers –
sugar-dusted and crusted,
baking now, bubbling in thickened juices
filling our rooms with late-summer aroma.
In early dusk my dear brings me hot pie –
so well-intended, so innocent in the making
so perfectly imperfect.
My love loves first blackberry pie
next, to make it for me.
The sweetness goes deep in him.
How can I not adore
the red stain of his lip, his happy blue teeth
as we taste the folly of union?
For I care not for blackberry pie –
gritty paste around seedy fruit,
undelicious until wholly given.
Hot indigo jam fills and sates,
kiss-bruised sticky purple pearls;
our eyes glaze over in surfeit,
black as berries with love.