Raspberries

The bittersweet is crowding out the raspberries. Even with my eyes closed I can feel the difference between the branches, even with my gloves on. The bittersweet snaps when I bend it at all. Almost as if it was never even connected to itself or to the ground. When it snaps, it snaps fast, my arm falls with it and presses against the sharp raspberry vines that I’d been carefully avoiding. As I write this, I’m looking down at my arms that are still cut up.

I just want to write about this because pruning raspberries is a nice experience that takes a lot of time. Honestly I have nothing important to say about it. I go into the barn to grab the clippers and my gloves. Then I get the wheelbarrow that’s upside down against the wall of the barn outside. I bring it over to the row of raspberries and place it by my side, parked at an angle so that it won’t roll down the hill. Then I look before me at all the vines and for a while I really feel in the thick of it. I’m cold after lunch so I’m wearing my sweater and a little hat. As I get going I warm up and take my layers off. I place them at the beginning of the row which is like the beginning of a sentence. When I look back at the progress I’ve made, my eyes naturally go towards the layers I’ve placed on the ground. The wind covers them in things like dead grass and leaves. I think to myself, oh goodness I shouldn’t have put those things there.

Mostly I am resting on my left knee, my right knee feels a little strange. I scooch forward whenever I have to. The gloves I’m wearing are made out of leather, they are yellow. After the winter, lots of little things have found their way to the ground between the raspberry plants. Just leaves and stuff like that. Windswept stuff, like what’s covering my sweater. It’s all kind of clogged between the branches.

When I get hold of a raspberry vine, I feel its length and flexibility. Then I try to give it a haircut about a foot above the ground but who knows. I think I’ve been cutting off a little too much. Once I cut and cut and cut, I look straight ahead and see clearly through this air that used to be dense with matter. And then I remember here, exactly here last summer, and the summer before that one. This spot in the air was green with hot red dots of raspberries hidden throughout. I say hot red because the berries were literally hot. Some of them were so ripe that they became like jam in my hands. Back then, I’d collect the fruit in two blue cardboard half pints. The nice berries I’d drop into one, and the weird smushed rotten ones I’d drop in the other. Then

Without shoes on

A and K come get me

We jump in the truck

I’m holding some of the messed-up berries

The windows are down in the truck

All three of us are sweating

The floor of the truck feels cold and there’s dirt on it

Across the one lane bridge

Thick leaves, it is a forest, there’s bird song, nearly can’t see the sky with all the leaves

We pull over, there’s a berry in my mouth

We put our bodies in the cold water.