Best Blackberry Poems

Down where the blackberries now bloom
      Blackberry winter is near
Jack Frost comes tonight maybe doom
      With you here there's no fear

'Oar's frost might kill the early plants
       But in...

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The wild blackberry villain
Fell in love with my sweet rose.
I found them in the garden
All entangled in love's throes.

I took a hoe and hit him hard
With all the strength I had.
How could my hybrid beauty be
Seduced by such a cad?

I only meant to whack him...

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Blackberry Memoir 

Blackberries, round and glossy,
Always invite me to return
To dusty country summer afternoons
When languid waves of mirages
Puddle into shimmering hiatus.

From the gently swaying hammock
I hear the rattle of berry pails
To see my grandmother, in her straw hat,
Smile an invitation - come with her
Into the...

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Quietly, feathered soles steal across fields
soft as Choctaw spirits' slipping shadows;
frescoed frost glazes summer remnants of pumpkin and persimmon.
The blackberry moon bends low,
pursed lips lingering and slow above Earth's alabaster face.
Past and present blend in one short span
when winter woos the autumn moon.

February 23, 2022...

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Sticks in containers,
Patiently wait on my lawn
For me to plant them....

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Blackberries start as white dots in a sea of thorns
The flower will fade, and a green berry will join
Protected, it will grow and be pink
Safe from even a massacring mink
Larger, it will swell until it is red
No enemy can lay down their head
Darker and darker...

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Reluctant tranquility fills the air
Dismissing expectations with her smile
With frozen wishes melting everywhere
She paints the earth in her artistic style

Dreams, dripping slowly from shivering trees
Transparent presents, covering the ground
Leftover kisses now lost to the breeze
Green taking over where white was once found

But tranquility's brush runs...

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I see grandmother's bonnet moving above the bramble.

My mother tells me not to keep eating berries. 
My little pail fills so slowly.


mouth drips purple juice
clothes torn, skin bleeding, itching
spill berries again...

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Well, if this contest is like your past
You'd better run to the liquor store fast
You may be standing in line
To get your blackberry wine
And find out they've just sold the last


06/20/11    For Francine's Wine contest...

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It's early yet for picking,
Only one black kiss 
At the end of pinky clusters, 
First fruit, 
Faceted like flies' eyes.

The biggest are up too high, 
In too far, where snakes live. 
Somebody could lose their balance,
Fall inside. 
Somebody could get trapped in brambles.

She used to...

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I woke when dawn peeked through my window.
Started pacing the floor back and forth, to and fro,
waiting for daylight to get to the blackberry patch,
intending to pick the ripe ones as my first batch.

Yesterday, I saw bunnies nibbling on the berries.
It was sunset, and their...

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The Girl with the Blackberry Eyes

So there you stand, with your yawn colored slickers,
wishing your life to be more
Fruit flavored fantasies sprinkled with stickers 
so much is waiting in store

Someone is longing your destined arrival,
desires held loose in her hand 
All that you need to...

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Skipping
   with rust streaked pails
      through knee-high foxtails
         bending to brush away 
            white powdery puffs of dandelions
 ...

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The radiation had shrunk the tumor
they told her
after eight weeks of treatment

No one knows how long we have
she said bravely
We're better off than the birds

Yes, they work incessantly
I answered 
making polite conversation
while my heart shed silent tears

If they tell me I'm going
she said, smiling
I'll eat...

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the skin on the floor
does not lumber down the hill
blackberries ripen


July 5, 2018...

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