She's not angry exactly but all business, <br />eating them right off the tree, with confidence, <br />the kind that lets her spit out the bad ones <br />clear of the sidewalk into the street. It's <br />sunny, though who can tell what she's tasting, <br />rowan or one of the serviceberries-- <br />the animal at work, so everybody, <br />save the traffic, keeps a distance. She's picking <br />clean what the birds have left, and even, <br />in her hurry, a few dark leaves. In the air <br />the dusting of exhaust that still turns pennies <br />green, the way the cloudy surfaces <br />of things obscure their differences, <br />like the mock orange or the apple rose that <br />cracks the paving stone, rooted in the plaza. <br />No one will say your name, and when you come to <br />the door no one will know you, a parable <br />of the afterlife on earth. Poor grapes, poor crabs, <br />wild black cherry trees, on which some forty-six <br />or so species of birds have fed, some boy's dead <br />weight or the tragic summer lightning killing <br />the seed, how boyish now that hunger <br />to bring those branches down to scale, <br />to eat of that which otherwise was waste, <br />how natural this woman eating berries, how alone.<br /><br />Stanley Plumly<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/woman-on-twenty-second-eating-berries/
