This Evening
This evening
I picked ripe,
red, raspberries
in a gentle summer rain.
The hay was new-mown
and baled in fields,
golden green,
gently rolling
hillock by hillock
down from my raspberry
bordered garden
to where silent spruce
and tall cottonwoods
stood dripping in rows,
trailing up,
like tired swimmers
from the river,
the clear, swift flowing,
salmon swollen river.
And gentle rain fell.
I picked
ripe, red, raspberries
in the rain.
Somewhere, they say,
is a drought,
somewhere a war,
somewhere,
a rout,
somewhere, they say,
children are dying,
I know nothing about.
Could I be allowed
this gift tonight:
the deepening twilight,
the red raspberries
I picked ripe,
in this gentle,
summer rain?
This evening
I picked ripe,
red, raspberries
in a gentle summer rain.
The hay was new-mown
and baled in fields,
golden green,
gently rolling
hillock by hillock
down from my raspberry
bordered garden
to where silent spruce
and tall cottonwoods
stood dripping in rows,
trailing up,
like tired swimmers
from the river,
the clear, swift flowing,
salmon swollen river.
And gentle rain fell.
I picked
ripe, red, raspberries
in the rain.
Somewhere, they say,
is a drought,
somewhere a war,
somewhere,
a rout,
somewhere, they say,
children are dying,
I know nothing about.
Could I be allowed
this gift tonight:
the deepening twilight,
the red raspberries
I picked ripe,
in this gentle,
summer rain?