Black Cherries
Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this
Notes
Where Ursula K. Le Guin taught us to swallow time itself, W. S. Merwin’s Black Cherries brings us back to the mouth—to the dark, late-summer fruit gathered in late afternoon light that tastes of memory and lost orchards. The act of eating becomes a sublime encounter with the object-cause of desire, where the tangible sweetness on the tongue operates as a screen covering an unbridgeable absence, transforming simple consumption into an exercise in surplus-enjoyment. It grounds August’s theme of Feast in the quiet realization that our deepest appetites are nourished not just by what is present on the branch, but by the lingering ghost of everything that came before. #poetry #feast #wsmerwin #blackcherries #august
W.S. Merwin, "Black Cherries" from Garden Time. Copyright © 2016 by W.S. Merwin.