!
oh bike summer bike
the dips+equal to you
up down you ride them
sparkling spokes
skidding tire
guttural gears
click the years
!
what am I
+against time
++small steady passage
body on earth
something/someone dies first
something/someone goes forth
!
turkey turkey
sixteen turkeys
straying littles
nipped into line
ragged band they
wade open meadow
breaking waves
of gold++ they wake
cackling in branch
and shamble of shade
!
from the roof of the world
hawksing hawk hawking
whoop+++whistle+++swoop
I watch the ground fly up
wingless it rises
what gives++what lives
(for now) inside
!
increasingly blue
and birded
these bushes
burdened
bear
!
reaching into
summer’s purse
its nub and pulse
I pick a bee
a bee picks me
ow ow ow ow says hand
it stings! says body
heart feels it too
venom exploring
its newest container
!
Last of summer
its berries
soft aunties and grammies
puckered++ mellow
how easily they fall into my hand
succumb to the hum+++humming earth
Image: by Ty Finck on Unsplash , licensed under CC 2.0.
Mary Buchinger:
I love picking blueberries—I grew up on a farm where harvesting fruits and vegetables was commonplace and vital. Now, having lived most of my years in the city, I find I’m flooded with feeling when I enter this particular blueberry patch in Maine that’s become one of my summer haunts. It was established by a man named Ed who bought forty acres to plant six bushes for his mother who loved blueberries As he tended them, he became captivated and eventually planted many long rows of different varieties, learning more and more about the crop. He called the place Ed’s Easy Pickin’ Farm and each day he’d drive there in his small white pickup with his beagle at his side. One day Ed tripped over his dog, fell hard and, soon after, died. A neighbor has taken over care of the blueberries. The patch sits between a stand of pines (sadly, thinned now to a veneer) and a mown meadow that is home to foxes and deer, visited by bear, and traversed by families of turkeys. Timeless and seasonal, this place insists I am too.
Mary Buchinger is the author of six poetry collections, including Navigating the Reach (2023), Virology (2022), /klaʊdz/ (2021), and e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling (2018). She serves on the board of the New England Poetry Club and teaches at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
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