Poems I wish I had written, part nine

Blueberries

It’s their plumpness that gets me,
As though they wanted to be something else entirely –
A cherry, an aubergine embryo, a heart
Swollen with love or pride or pleasure –
As though they were bursting our of their skins
With desire and ambition
With ideas above their station

And the faint grey sheen of their darkness
A silvery fox fur that bruises easily
Or is licked off like sugar,
Like sweat off a lover.

They colour icecream and cordials,
They stud those muffins you love
With bursts of sweetness and stain
the buttery crumbling cake
An imperial purple

Your favorite fruit, you say.
They remind you of home.
Of summer in Canada
Of being young and greedy.

Or, older but no less greedy,
Of fields high in the Apennines
Where families were scooping the bushes
With steel combs nailed to wood boxes,
Singing and happy and sweating.
We smelt them before we saw them.

Blueberries have no smell,
But their taste is fragrant and summery.
They taste like flowers would taste
In an edible universe:
A jolt of colour,
Cool skin on the toungue,
Explosions of pleasure.

A. Alvarez