Ode To Blueberries (from 'Wounded Bud')

Now that it's September, I want to thank blueberries.
I want to thank peaches, cantaloupes, cherry tomatoes
and corn on the cob. All summer long while we griped

about the Republicans, you were lying there in baskets,
blue eyes silently watching, blinking back tears.
Some of you were whole sunsets in my hand.

I'm not sure what antioxidants are, but thank you:
I know that you were full of them.
I loved your fuzz, buxom peach, your sass, blackberry.

I loved your smile, honeydew, halved and split as we
slobbered together. Local strawberry, just one of you
gushing on my tongue was almost too much to bear!

Next summer you could do a better job of staying
under four dollars a pint; otherwise, no complaint.
How erotic you are, plum, lounging in a sunbeam,

a burgundy still-life sweating droplets of fever.
You should be ashamed how your waves imploded
on the beaches of my mouth!

Well, it was a scene. But thank you.
I also want to thank some of you flowers: begonia,
peony, chrysanthemum and lucifer crocosmia.

I do not forget the morning glory, that soft trumpet
made of sky, calling us inward toward granaries
of moonlight. And now, just as the rest of you languish,

the apples arrive! Round crimson shouts
from green caverns of Autumn afternoon.
O humans, we too might burst, an orchard of longings,

wild but rooted, globe-clustered, mulled by the sun.
We too might drop at the edge of the meadow,
silvered by flurries of milkweed and thistle.

Why not bend to our ripening, the pungent smolder
of our inward sugars, the grace and gravity of our Fall?
Why not bow to the blessed sag of limbs and bruise

our knees in surrender? Lying on the bee-festered earth,
hollowed, wormed out with inward paths, and free
from every striving to rise, why not let this turning planet
have her way with us, and do what she loves?