Simon Perchik

*

The sun must crave fruit
and between these vines
a breeze still thin, gnawing
the moist stones--all winter

the sun prowling, undersized
smelling from halfway up your arms
where the ground stretches out
with blackberries, with the soft cries
once prairie and mountainside
whose weight gently falls asleep
inside your bones and overflows.

What sounds like the sea
is the sunlight licking fresh fruit
--all these tears! darker than waves
and your cool mouth I still hold open
on thirsty afternoons where each breeze
begins again with shorelines, with seeds
smaller than another year
and snowcries grazing the underbrush

though there is no spray
and my hand kept open
draining itself dry.

I eat these berries at night when the sun
who will grow so big--I blanket them
with salt, more salt, still more
and the waves almost through my skin.