Strawberrying

My hands are murder-red. Many a plump head drops on the heap in the basket. Or, ripe to bursting, they might be hearts, matching the blackbirds's wing-fleck. Gripped to a reed he shrieks his ko-ka-ree in the next field. He's left his peck in some juicy cheeks, when at first blush and mostly white, they showed streaks of sweetness to the marauder. We're picking near the shore, the morning sunny, a slight wind moving rough-veined leaves our hands rumple among. Fingers find by feel the ready fruit in clusters. Here and there, their squishy wounds....Flesh was perfect yesterday....June was for gorging.... sweet hearts young and firm before decay. 'Take only the biggest and not too ripe,' a mother calls to her girl and boy, barefoot in the furrows. 'Don't step on any. Don't change rows. Don't eat too many.' Mesmerized by the largesse, the children squat and pull and pick handfuls of rich scarlets, half for the baskets, half for avid mouths. Soon, whole faces are stained. A crop this big begs for plunder. Ripeness wants to be ravished, as udders of cow when hard, the blue-veined bags distended, ache to be stripped. Hunkered in mud between the rows, sun burning the backs of our necks, we grope for, and rip loose soft nippled heads. If they bleed—too soft— let them stay. Let them rot in the heat. When, hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty, still attached to their dead stems— families smothered as at Pompeii—I rise and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped head. Red-handed, I leave the field.