When he is in the mood
My son will fill a bucket with berries,
Barely stopping for a taste.
He does not need help
After all, he is five years old,
Tall for his age, strong and determined.
His bucket will overflow before his hands falter.
Or he will run out of berries within reach.
And even then, he will gaze at the ones
Taunting him from high up in the bracken
And imagine flying up there to retrieve them
Or building a robot who can reach.
He will not notice scratches on his golden skin;
His hat will fall off, abandoned.
When the picking is done, buckets overloaded,
Only then will my boy turn to his berries.
He will eat them by the handful,
Staining not just the tips of his fingers,
Making the sounds of a happy bear cub
As he rolls around, content.

My daughter can find blackberries anywhere
Parks, paths, people’s lawns, on the sides of unlikely cliffs
No place is safe from her nose, her eyes, or her 6th sense.
She will reach, graceful and klutzy at the same time,
Stretching skinny arms to pluck berries one by one
Immediately consuming them
She is not rushed but she is efficient
She might take a break to chase a butterfly but she will return.
She is not so little anymore but still cannot be trusted to mind the bucket
As she will then stop picking altogether to guard her hoard poorly
Until she is found, face, hands and hair stained her favourite purple,
Twigs and blackberry remains tangled in her wild curls.
Her eyes, big and sweet and blue, seemingly guileless,
She would swear on unicorns and princesses,
On sparkles and batgirl, but not on her favourite stuffies,
that she has not been eating many berries at all.
And maybe many is hard to quantify for an almost four year old.


NCL September 2018