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?

~ Alfred K. LaMotte