Some Raspberries Don't Ripen until after the Frost

 Some raspberries don't ripen until after the frost. It wasn't what they were made to do...raspberries  are meant for hot summer days and long sunshine, when their juice gathers sweet and they turn red day after day in tart waves. Then, it seems like there will always be more. I know better, of course. I know that the days will get short and cold, and that the time for raspberries will pass. But they don't.

Some roses don't bloom until October. When all around them, more predictable buds turn to hips, they refuse to prepare for sleep yet. It doesn't matter that so many around them are ready to store up what energy is left to them and save it for other days. They use everything they have left now to remind the world of beauty. They know it will be a long winter and and they've made their job memory.

Blanketflowers just don't know when to stop. For them, it could still be June, when they first poked strong stems up from sleepy dirt, just then gone warm. All summer, they bloomed thick and sunny and liked it. They must be addicted.

The daisies are probably laughing. In June, they bloomed dense, crowding each other for sunlight in sensational, snowy clumps. Then they stopped, but their leaves stayed green. Now, they give a single gift like a child holding a dandelion to his mother. Here, this is for you. I love you,

I think maple has been listening to them all, having refused to turn proper maple-y red and gold. It concedes only its tips to autumn, telling me that it, like all the others, knows what time it is, but has so loved feeling the sap run and favorable breezes. They are not ready to die.

Me either.

Last Berries

 

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once in July when the sun is high and hot, 

when bees circumnavigate their busy route between blooms, 

leaving me to reach between them for my breakfast -

 and once in September, when dew hangs heavy on their leaves 

and branches don't tolerate bending but, anticipating brittle cold, 

snap when I lift them to peer underneath for the purpling berries hiding there.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once when still young and supple, 

confident of many more risings and settings, 

when, exposing their heads to the sky, 

look unafraid toward productive tomorrows, 

full of juice and beauty.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

once when nearly done, while leave curl dark at their edges,

and their buds are almost spent, 

nudged into fruit that may not have time to ripen.

These branches bend under accumulated weight,

grown from resisting the storms of a full season and 

the weight of small, green berries that will not have time to redden.

My raspberries fruit twice - 

early and late,

young and old, 

carefree and wise,

innocent and full of days.

One life, one season,

producing what they can until one perfect frost cuts them off.

Taste one. These last berries are the sweetest.

That's how I know they are mine.