THE BLUEBERRY SONG

Blueberries bellow out round, ripe notes,
ringing loud and cool and blue,
clinging to white stars, conjuring
inky fingers swollen by blue lips
and ravenous blue days where
blackbirds beat their black wings blue.

This is the day the blueberries ring out
the blueberry women: wide and round
and ripe as blue bubbles,
balancing their blueberry baskets
upon their blueberry hips, swinging
loud and cool and round, rolling
blue songs from off the tips of blue tongues
underneath the blueberry branches
and rattling black feathered wind.

And this is the day the blueberry women
bring out the blueberry girls,
tied tight to blue apron string hips,
with blueberry knees and ripening blue lips,
all rabbit-eyed and wringing out blue notes
from blue flesh into blue juice, breaking
the round and wine of blue mouths
mouthing blue kisses, impressing blue tongues,
learning to sing the blueberry song.

And this is the day the blueberry girls sing out
the blueberry boys, and, oh, I’d be
a blueberry boy running and fetching
and wringing again the midnight fruit,
to pluck and cup blue morning dew,
and roll their blue sweetness between
my blue thumbs, blue fingers, blue tongue,
as the blackbirds cry Blue
and the berries cry Blue
and the branches cry Oh lord, blue
breaking underneath the blue weight
of blue tears tearing into blue skin
as the blueberry girls blossom
into blueberry women, and I,
into a blueberry man.

John is the winner of the John Wood Poetry Prize and the Joy Scantillbury Prize. His full-length collection, “The Blueberry Song,” is being submitted to publishers.

Poetry in the Park

The Port Angeles Fine Art Center in collaboration with the Olympic Peninsula Authors group selected two of my poems as a part of their Summertide outdoor exhibition. The poems are located on signboards and installed throughout the park. Listen to my poem “Apples to Apples”.

READ MORE POEMS

Leaving Rain

The rain has forgotten how to stop falling,
even how to fall—falling up,
falling through, falling back in on itself,
lost—the way your mother’s empty eyes
look through you, to you. I hope it didn’t
dog you the whole way to California.
Sometimes, everyone needs to leave
behind the rain, if only to dry out
habits, breathe in something else
besides water and this town’s pulp.

North Beach, that last salmon run, left us both
cold, wet, even in the sun. Skunked. Like us.
I said damn fish, broke, water, line, god, shit.
You said Chinook, water, diamonds, god, god.
We couldn’t figure it out, so you left
halfway to Spring. Funny how words act
as doorways rather than doors themselves.
Yours led you to oranges. Why can’t I
follow where glass is just another word
for sand made too hot to remember its name?
Is there a word in California for water,
for the way it sounds when it beads
off my hat, dribbles down my shoulders,
seeps into my pockets, pooling inside canvas
and me, the way your hands once pulled together
inside mine like night holding in evening’s last glow?
You used to hold onto the rain. And me.
Was anything ever there to really let go?
I wish I were the one who drove you
to California, oranges, and leaving rain.
Three Things

There are three things you can never get back,
my father always told me. The spent arrow,
the spoken word, and the missed opportunity.
He drew the song out with his fingertips
releasing words into the air for me to catch
—or try to. History too faint for me to hear.
Like his father before, he pantomimed
the words, honoring those gestures, important
as wilderness and path, father and son.
I still see the string of his bow drawn tight
against his eyes. Squinting, concentrating
beyond the sun, a mark I could never follow.
Setting aside the bow, he held up his open palms,
shrugged, waiting for the sound of a lesson
learned. I waited, too. I didn’t understand
how hands so heavy could rein leather
tight as lightning yet fall soft and loose as rain.
Funny how all three things keep coming back.
Apples to Apples

We do not define friendship
until the pieces are removed
one by one, like Alzheimer’s
procedure, until we are: Wait, what?

But then you remember pear trees.
We could start this tree from seed
but the tree planted grows quicker.
Let us then clear away these dead limbs,
make heading cuts to our false starts,
encourage growth below our many edits,
graft new shoots for the years to bear fruit.
Pears are not quite apples, you told me.
But when we stand back, we will see
a sky divided, fractured by these long limbs
of memory even as they gather in the blue
branching sky, ripe pears like ornaments
hanging heavy, weighing on you, me,
all the lost seasons between.
Mermaid Tears

or call it Sea Glass if that cuts less,
breaks polished over, sun-stumbled
glints of tumbled time rumbled out
smoothed, wine rubble
condensed to frosted dew, jewels
forged inside this unseen wasteland
heart where even butterflies compete
lapping up the eyes of turtles
for tears salted, hard won, broken
shards exquisitely weathered.