Saint Julian Press Poet

Fred LaMotte - Author and Poet

Ode to Blueberries

Now that it's September, I want to thank blueberries.

I want to thank peaches, cantaloupes, cherry tomatoes

and corn on the cob. All summer long while we griped

 

about the Republicans, you were lying there in baskets,

blue eyes silently watching, blinking back tears.

Some of you were whole crimson sunsets in my hand.

 

I'm not sure what antioxidants are, but thank you:

I know that you were full of them.

I loved your fuzz, buxom peach, your sass, blackberry.

 

I loved your smile, honeydew, halved and split

as we slobbered together. Local strawberry,

just one of you gushing on my tongue was almost

 

too much to bear. Next summer you could do a better job

of staying under three dollars a pint; otherwise, no complaint.

How erotic you are, plum, lounging in a sunbeam,

 

your crimson still-life, your sweated drops of fever!

You should be ashamed the way your waves imploded

on the beaches of my mouth: well, it was a scene!

 

But thank you. I also want to thank some of you flowers:

begonia, peony, chrysanthemum and lucifer crocosmia.

I do not forget the morning glory, that soft trumpet

 

made of sky, calling us inward toward granaries

of moonlight. And now, just as the rest of you languish,

the apples arrive! Round crimson shouts

 

from green caverns of Autumn afternoon.

O humans, we too might burst, an orchard of longings,

wild but rooted, globe-laden, corridored with fruit.

 

We might drop at the edge of the meadow,

silvered in flurries of milkweed and thistle-down.

Why not bend to our ripening, the pungent smolder

 

of our inward sugars, the grace and gravity of Fall?

Why not bow to the blessed sag of our limbs

in the gentle bruise of surrender on our knees?

 

We could lie on the bee-festered earth, hollowed, wormed

out with inner paths, free from every striving to rise. Why not let

this turning planet have her way with us, and do what she loves?

 

 

 

Fred LaMotte

Copyright 2013

 

 

Fred LaMotte is an interfaith college chaplain at The Evergreen State College in Olympia WA, as well as an adjunct instructor in World Religions, teaching college courses through distance learning program for deployed military personal. Fred is a Quaker. He has degrees from Yale University and Princeton Theological Seminary.