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Health & Fitness

No Road Maps, No Street Signs

a poem by Dan Avery

"Well," grandma said, the sun glinting in her glasses
"Go down the road a couple of mile
It ain't marked, but you can't miss the turn
Go right, five or six mile. You'll know the spot,
there's a stand of birch and a virgin pine. Big old
thing," she said, dusting the dirt off
the potato just dug from her garden.
She looked at my mother then, the potato in hand,
birch and pine trees reflected in her eyes
gauging my mother from behind that forest.
She handed me the potato. It felt cool
from being buried in the dirt. "Put this on
the stoop, child, then get in the car," she said.

 

Sure enough, birch trees, hundreds of them
thousands of pines where grandma stopped
looked like everywhere we'd been driving.
Undergrowth so thick we struggled; Grandma marched
along as if she was in a supermarket aisle
leading us in a quarter mile, the plastic pail
banging against my leg, making a hollow sound
in air humid, close under a sky of leaves.
In the clearing stood the largest raspberry bush
I'd ever seen, the branches heavy with berries
purplish red, their color as deep as the forest.
"These will make a good pie," she said.

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I think about that day hauling weighty pails,
of the smell of berries and boiling sugar,
of the jellies and preserves she put up, of the pie
served warm that night with vanilla ice cream, the top
crust golden, shiny with sugar, the seeds
stuck between my teeth, seeds small
like the ice chips I spoon into her mouth
as I sit by her bed listening to her breathing
growing shallow, like a pail being emptied of berries.
I am worried. But not about her.
She doesn't need road maps or street signs.
She knows where the berry bushes are.

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