rooster-crow and the repetitive tap
of a hammer like the tick
of a clock in the distance
woke me and I followed what
was left of your voice like the tracks
of an animal to the edge of the copper
water. Though I knew there were
Cottonmouths thick as ropes, I waded
into the cool shadows and then up
a hill where trees grew, preordained, laid
out in perfect rows like headstones. When
I had reached that place where
we had left the past, and shed even
our skins for love, I saw them:
the blackberries surrounded
by briers. Supple and sparkling
as jewels. The same ones that we
had subsisted on, with bleeding
fingers, for one afternoon
of our lives. And though
I remembered all the fears
we shared like sackcloth
and ashes, and I knew
the danger of reaching
into the unknown, (it seemed
like there were serpents waiting
beneath every beautiful thing)
blindly grasping for the sweetness
that everyone longs for, and I too
have always feared those things
I cannot see, I put my faith
in the innocence of nature. I tried
to believe in the benevolence
that exists if you go beyond
the fear, and so I found
them again: the blackberries,
the fruit not forbidden
to those who love, huge
and succulent, and so full
of grace, they were almost
too heavy to bear.