Untimely Eating
Posted on 01 June 2010
The kinds of words I say on a daily basis:
“Did you just throw a fish at me??”
“Stop hitting him with that roll of butcher paper.”
“Do not take apart the porch again!”
“Please stop pulling my shirt up.”
“We do not ride each other like horses in this house!”
“I will not play the zombie game with you unless you say you’re sorry for peeing on your sister’s floor!”
So perhaps it’s no surprise when, at a Memorial Day weekend cookout, I sneak quietly away from the small talk of which I’m not a part anyway, having never met these people before. I wander around the edge of the property, which sits on a grassy reserve in the middle of a fair wilderness, mulched and fighting off the woods that tend to creep in when one is not looking.
Most of the black-berries are not, yet, but are shaded in hues of pink and white, even palest green, which, while pretty, is not palatable. But trudging forward, avoiding hairy, thick poison ivy vines, I spy them.
Deep black, shining even in the shady woods. All seeds and stingy growth in this tough clay soil, but sweet, still, and just what my mouth needs.
Not reprimands, threats. Not pleas or groveling for a minute to breathe, to sleep, to own my flesh again. Not even words to toss out into the ether, wondering why I need this particular brand of everlasting life.
Just me, behaving strangely at a social gathering (again), ingesting the things no one else bothers to notice.
I think of one of my favorite poems, “Blackberry Eating,” and wonder at the poor soul who must wait for blackberries until late September, when the birds have long disposed of whatever good things grow on bushes in these parts. I thank the red clay for the escape, the green forest for hiding me for a little while. I hope no one speaks to me as I emerge, my teeth bathed in purple, my mouth a jungle of seeds. I have nothing of consequence to say at such a moment, anyway.
Blackberry Eating - Galway Kinnell
I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry -- eating in late September.
1 Response to Untimely Eating
Jennifer, I came late this, but love it. I can relate. Even though I don’t need to escape from my child any more because she is grown and gone, everyday routines and conversations leave me craving silence.
Your behaving strangely at a party is my spending the weekend happily alone.