Blackberry Picking in Kentucky<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ashy legs dangled\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n from my grandfather\u2019s weather-beaten flatbed,<\/span><\/p>\n wooden boards blanched from too many seasons of tobacco, potatoes, and corn.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A harvest of cousins, aunts, and uncles piled on with all manner of rinsed bucket<\/span><\/p>\n as my grandfather slowly dragged us into the woods to find wild blackberry bushes.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was the hard red berries that gave the bushes with bruise-colored clusters away.<\/span><\/p>\n We — sticky with sweat<\/span><\/p>\n warned to watch for thorns<\/span><\/p>\n and snakes —<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n reached into the thicket to the promised obsidian clumps.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The flesh yielded beneath our fingertips as we\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n plucked and plopped the bouncy fruit into<\/span><\/p>\n pails.<\/span><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a race because there were so many berries among the thorns, <\/span><\/p>\n and for the children<\/span><\/p>\n Time meant nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n Our voices joined the birds and frogs as we<\/span><\/p>\n blew on and ate a few of the more irresistible drupelets<\/span><\/p>\n pressing the balls of the fruit to the roof of our mouths until they were<\/span><\/p>\n flooded with juice sweet and tart like memories.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When all the buckets were heavy laden with fruit,<\/span><\/p>\n we meandered home.<\/span><\/p>\n With fingers stained the color of sacrifice,<\/span><\/p>\n We offered the buckets to my grandmother<\/span><\/p>\n to be made into a plethora of dark and delicious things. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blackberry Picking in Kentucky Ashy legs dangled\u00a0 from my grandfather\u2019s weather-beaten flatbed, wooden boards blanched from too many seasons of tobacco, potatoes, and corn. A harvest of cousins, aunts, and uncles piled on with all manner of rinsed bucket as my grandfather slowly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4411,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4411"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114249"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125116,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114249\/revisions\/125116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}