We collected pounds and pounds of Blackberries on our walk this afternoon, enough to freeze some, make a Blackberry and Apple Crumble and many jars of Blackberry and Apple Jam. I was reminded of Seamus Heaney’s poem as we went around though we have left none of them to go mouldy!
Juicy blackberries
Stile en route
The Zebra coat on this pony amused us
Blackberry and Apple Jam
Blackberry-Picking
for Philip Hobsbaum
Late August, given heavy rain and sunFor a full week, the blackberries would ripen.At first, just one, a glossy purple clotAmong others, red, green, hard as a knot.You ate that first one and its flesh was sweetLike thickened wine: summer’s blood was in itLeaving stains upon the tongue and lust forPicking. Then red ones inked up and that hungerSent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-potsWhere briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drillsWe trekked and picked until the cans were full,Until the tinkling bottom had been coveredWith green ones, and on top big dark blobs burnedLike a plate of eyes. Our hands were pepperedWith thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.But when the bath was filled we found a fur,A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.The juice was stinking too. Once off the bushThe fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fairThat all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.
I love the child’s voice in this poem – the ‘big dark blobs burned/ Like a plate of eyes’ , the reference to the Pirate, Blackbeard and the hope that the cans would stay full of blackberry sweetness, a disappointment that happened year after year.
