Blackberries

I bought blackberries at Sam's.  I couldn't resist them.  They were little fragments of summer in their plastic box, and I desperately needed some summer right now to combat the cold and grey January days I've been having lately.

Blackberries grow wild in bramble thickets at our place in the country.  The past two years, I've missed them, either because of my knee or the AP reading, but usually, I can walk down the path to our shack and get my fill of them. The flavor of them is amazing.  They're tiny, but tart and sweet, perfection.  I can pick handfuls of them, and they stain everything when they're ripe, my hands, my mouth, the tails of summer t-shirts I use as makeshift collection baskets.  I eat them all and then try to suck the incriminating purple off my fingertips.

These storebought berries don't exactly have the same zing to them, but they're a welcome fruit diversion.  As I was waiting for my rice to cook tonight, I opened the little box and just ate them straight from the container with only a light rinse as a garnish.  Their taste was like a little memory, a reminiscence of the summer I yearn for.  I'm going to keep eating berries and daydreaming about summer days on the porch of my shack with a book and a camera and nothing but a golden afternoon with the sound of wind in the trees and the tall grass rippling before me.  Maybe Time will be merciful, move quickly, and those days will be back here again soon.