Raspberry Patch Tesseract

A single taste 

of the precious jam

on my tongue 

in Winter 

and I am here again.

Sunglow green leaves,

triads of midnight purple treasure,

mingle with the scarlet unripe.

Chalky lavender stems,

studded with pale, mirthless thorns.

A delicious smell,

beyond words,

cuts straight

to the limbic.

Lovingly lost here —

the rhythm of fingers plucking,

the pleasing patter in the pail.

The brambly black raspberry patches

around my parent’s house

are a magical machine

that folds 

layers of time

back onto themselves,

over and over,

like berries swirled into

sweet batter.

All at once:

I am a feral, bare-legged child,

running wild with my sister,

sweet tang in my mouth,

a proud map of scratches on our legs

announcing our fierce and united denial 

of pants.

I am a young woman,

my sister, 

pregnant and persistent as ever,

her belly a great round berry.

We plucked for hours,

entranced,

I almost forgot my class and was late,

Later,

she napped.

I am middle-aged,

deliciously round and lumpy,

a bit prickly,

been growing in fertile soil

for a while now.

Our seeds have born fruit.

A pack of our laughing children

swirls around us,

equally obsessed,

hands and faces streaked 

with purple-red juice.

Our mother,

their beloved grandmother,

keeps a close orbit,

ever attendant.

I am old,

my sisters also old,

but fierce as ever.

Our mother is gone,

but not.

Because,

we are the grandmothers now,

gray braids on our backs,

we stoop and cackle and creak together,

as we guide our children’s children

to pick and snack,

and bear the occasional scratch —

worth the sweetness 

that winds way back

through

these Rubus reticulations.