LITERATURE

Strawberrying

May Swenson - 1913-1989

My hands are murder-red. Many a plump head

drops on the heap in the basket. Or, ripe

to bursting, they might be hearts, matching

the blackbird’s wing-fleck. Gripped to a reed

he shrieks his ko-ka-ree in the next field.

He’s left his peck in some juicy cheeks, when

at first blush and mostly white, they showed

streaks of sweetness to the marauder.

We’re picking near the shore, the morning

sunny, a slight wind moving rough-veined leaves

our hands rumple among. Fingers find by feel

the ready fruit in clusters. Here and there,

their squishy wounds. . . . Flesh was perfect

yesterday. . . . June was for gorging. . . .

sweet hearts young and firm before decay.

“Take only the biggest, and not too ripe,”

a mother calls to her girl and boy, barefoot

in the furrows. “Don’t step on any. Don’t

change rows. Don’t eat too many.” Mesmerized

by the largesse, the children squat and pull

and pick handfuls of rich scarlets, half

for the baskets, half for avid mouths.

Soon, whole faces are stained.

A crop this thick begs for plunder. Ripeness

wants to be ravished, as udders of cows when hard,

the blue-veined bags distended, ache to be stripped.

Hunkered in mud between the rows, sun burning

the backs of our necks, we grope for, and rip loose

soft nippled heads. If they bleed—too soft—

let them stay. Let them rot in the heat.

When, hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy

leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes

once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty,

still attached to their dead stems—

families smothered as at Pompeii—I rise

and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped

head. Red-handed, I leave the field.

From The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson. Copyright © 1991. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.