The Blueberry Fields of August Machias, Maine
(the lowbush upland blueberry, vaccinium lamarckii, is thinned out every two years by burning to improve the next season’s yield)
Gardeners blister berries of indigo
With terrible measures of fire
Scorching each spine and ridge
Singeing obedience on rows of enveloped sadness
Their cupped hands scooping out swirls of arsoned acreage
As refilled buckets drip kerosene below
Summoning forth flaming fists of metaphor
As gleaners sow garlands of fire
From pails fueling a ritual flame
To fields of August purple madness
Swept away by fiercer embraces hotter than any summer sky’s
While vines wither in a terrible burning roar
Scalding blasts fierce as a prophet’s oratorio
Score purple fields of fire forever
Roots fully plump like nurturing mothers
Withstanding storms of cremating caresses
Summer fire-walkers spread rows of sadness to others
Blazing bracelets of blueberries set aglow
A season and an hour on a hill
Scorched bald and fruitless by ceremonial fire
From which a man of lonely pilgrimage
Atop a rood of cedar waits sinless
From which He might watch and judge
Green leafed innocence charred black and still
As heavy pails empty on dreams below
Gleaners sow terrible measures of fire
Exploding gentle berries of indigo
To spatter the juices of burning ritual madness
Onto bodies stained forever in this summer tableau
Where weary souls set blameless vines aglow.
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