The Work of Blackberries

and a new, arresting book of poems

I often get sad when I look at my phone, so tonight I looked at blackberries.

As I poured them into the baking dish, ready to add the crumble topping, their vibrancy startled me. It demanded my attention. I was happy to lend it.

I raised my phone to take a picture, but it was as if the berries shrank back. I watched them lose their luster through the screen. So, I put the phone down and stared at them, unfiltered, until I felt their work. The experience of color was almost physical. Summer purple.

It was a work of wonder and attention, and it was work made possible by a month steeped in poetry. I’ve been reading two books, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s 44 Poem’s on Being With Each Other, and Paul J. Pastor’s The Locust Years. Tonight, I am writing about the latter.

The introductory poem startled me, similar to the way tonight’s blackberries did. Perhaps the poem paved the way for that effect. It’s just four lines,* but I spent an hour on the airplane earlier this month turning it over and over. We were flying out to see my family in Oregon and to visit the Redwoods. I carried the book from giant tree to giant tree until I found the right one for a photograph:

Paul Pastor hails from Oregon, and I can feel the Pacific Northwest in his poetry. It brings me home, and it brings me to a halt. Some of the lines are so haunting, the metaphors so surprising, and the cadence so mesmerizing, that it’s minutes before I can move on with my day.

These are the types of word experiences we need. They give birth to more- I don’t know if I would have been arrested by the blackberries tonight without the poems’ work. Poetry slows us down; it is the opposite of the terrifying work of AI. (I wish it was the opposite of the nine baskets of laundry in my living room.) I’m grateful for this book, it has been a close enough companion to already be coffee stained. Its pages are full of wonder and guiding light.

*please buy it to read those four lines