The First Day Of Autumn

Blackberry Eating
By Gallway Kinnel

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 unfbidden to my tongue, (1.)
as words sometimes do, certain, peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinceh open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry...eating in late September.

Welcome to autumn! :)

-OndineMonet
"Blackberries"
San Francisco, California
September 20, 2006
Late Afternoon

1. edit: unbidden