Wild Raspberries
       

We cried all night, in view of others hopeful we'd return
to reason. Already they'd transformed us to a secret, thus
a lie, their hushed invective like cruel music wafting coolly by:
you a wily, would-be homewrecker and me a fool grasping

for a semblance of my youth. (That boat, I know, keeps sailing
out.) In reply, I pace the house alone and replay past conversations
like favorite songs. Melodies rise in candlelight, our lyrics flicker.
I flip them round, study every shadowed facet, and stop to write

our story down—the long evenings we watched darkness
slip across the sky like an inky sheet over children tucked in
for the night who tried to trust light would come again
and soon, who tried not to think about the threat

within the prayer they were forced to recite:
If I should die
                before I wake—
                                          Remember when we stole
away from the back-yard barbeque and traipsed past

the no trespassing signs at the outskirts of the wood
to pick wild raspberries like precious gems from a diadem,
how we popped them quick between our lips when the train
came and we waved and bored passengers waved back

from behind smudged windowpanes? We sure gave them
something to see. My god, those berries were sweet! —
and tart-tinged, like sparks flaring in the dark caves
of our mouths. Delicious. Like deep kissing. How rich

we were in love, how rich. Now I preserve wild raspberries
with words so we won't get lost or ever end—preserve the days
nothing was forbidden and nothing should have been
painful. Those inevitable evenings as clouds pressed low,

we should have trusted the sky to cast off
its stormy load—the way, in winter, I can stand at the edge
of a frozen lake we used to splash in and know
that spring will thaw and summer warm it, while not

too far from here, raspberries will grow wild again
and ripen. A shame to let them go uneaten.

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Copyright © 2022 Marisa P. Clark All rights reserved
from Pembroke Magazine
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission