From Joy to Joy to Joy

Three Poems for August

Blackberry Gatherers by Elizabeth Stanhope

A Line-storm Song
by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.

This is one of my favorite Frost poems, as it captures in vivid language an actual summer storm while deftly using that real experience as a metaphor for all the hardships and difficulties that will be encountered in life, all the while asking for his beloved to come and be his love even in the rain.

From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward   
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Ever since I first heard this poem (on The Daily Poem podcast, which I highly recommend), it has lodged itself firmly in my brain and comes forth every time the peaches appear in the store. The picture of eating, in one bite of a fresh, juicy peach, the whole history of that peach, every one of the long days it took to grow, is profound. The line “the round jubilance of peach” is the best description of the fruit I’ve ever read. And that final stanza: it is such a beautiful testimony to how much joy such a small thing as a blossom can bring into your life, and what miracles all of our lives are filled with.

Blackberry Picking
by Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Of course, I had to include another Seamus Heaney poem, as I have a definite soft spot for his work. This is the perfect August poem. The title leads you to expect something similar to Lee’s poem on peaches above, but the two poems are very different in tone and style. Blackberry Picking looks at the underbelly of summer; the heat, the blood, the fermentation, the rotting. I love the imagery in this poem, and how the speaker, seemingly a child, falls into a heady love with the taste of the berries, and desperately tries to store them up. But, as with so many good things, they could not be hoarded. They spoiled and rotted, and had to be thrown out every year. “It wasn’t fair… Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.” That is how I feel about so many good things in life, and a great reminder for us storing up summer memories as we approach the end of the season.