"Blackberry-picking" by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

"Blackberry Eating" - Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry -- eating in late September.

"On the Balcony" - Cassat

"Holocene" - Bon Iver

"How to Be Eaten by a Lion" - Michael Johnson

If you hear the rush, the swish of mottle sand

and dust kicked up under the striving paws

its cessation, falling into the sharp and brittle grass

like tick of a tin roof under sun or a hint of rain that wakes you,

try to stand your ground. Try not to scream,

for it devalues you. That tawny head and burled

mange, the flattened ears of its sleek engine

will only seem a blur, a shock, a shadow

across your neck that leaves you cold.

It may seem soft, barely a blow,

more like a falling, an exquisite giving

of yourself to the ground, made numb

by those eyes. It may be easier just to watch,

for fighting will only prolong things,

and you will have no time to notice the sky,

the texture of dust, what incredible leaves

the trees have. Instead, focus on your life,

its crimson liquor he grows drunk on.

Notice the way the red highlights his face,

how the snub nose is softened, the lips made

fuller; notice his deft musculature, his rapture,

because in all creation there is not art

to compare with such elegance, such simplicity.

Notice this and remember it,

this way in which you became beautiful

when you thought that there was nothing more.