It's blueberry season in Michigan again. Since we visited Michigan early this year, we not only missed the yearly raspberry picking, but the blueberry frenzy as well. That would be the picking, the cleaning, the canning and freezing and baking of everything blueberry. Oh, and let's not forget the eating of everything blueberry, too! Here's a Haibun* I wrote last year about the blueberry pickin' season in Michigan.
Michigan Blues
This Michigan morning is bone-chilling. Blueberries shiver to shake off their jackets of dew drops and puff their purple bellies toward the sun. For some, this will be their last tanning session before the pickers come. Errant blackberry bushes push their way between blueberries, tempting the bees. If the sun hits the patch just right, it's like looking through a kaleidoscope of dripping purple, pulsing blue and nipple-hard red orbs.
rows of braided arms
offer sun-sweet blue droplets
tempting teased taste buds
From behind the bushes, straw hats form a conga-line bobbing up and down like horses on a merry-go-round. As if the blueberry bushes were barbers, conversation flows sweet as creek water. Grandmothers exchange pie and jam recipes, swap stories about their grandchildren and complain about the crops while popping one berry after another off the bushes. Before the pies rise and bubble, and before the jams are canned, the berries hear an earful. While grannies pick handfuls for their buckets strung by rope around their ever-expanding waistlines, a few land on their salivating palates, just for good measure.
weighing blueberries
farmers grin at the grannies'
purple stained smiles
This Michigan morning, the sun has won its battle with the moon. The grannies go home to their kitchens where their straw hats are replaced by recipe-stained aprons. No measuring cups are needed in these kitchens. A pinch of cinnamon by frail, translucent fingers. A dash of salt by trembling, age-speckled hands. A bi-focaled eye knows exactly how much sugar, and strong loose-skinned arms knead the dough. Blueberry pie that only a grandmother can bake will bring a family together tonight. Oh, sure, there are recipe cards in the cupboard, and they all have the same ingredients: equal parts of love.
hair white as flour
her apron spans a lifetime -
her heart, a harvest moon
*Haibun:
A Haibun is a combination of prose and haiku poems. Its focus is often on everyday experiences, but sometimes it focuses on a journey, keeping in the the style of the originator of haibun, a Japanese monk named Basho, who kept travel journals.
