The Thing with Brambles

Today, I planted Arapaho Blackberries—just
seedlings.  So delicate in their small tangle of green
on tender stems.  If experts are to be believed,
my first crop of berries will be two springs hence.

The crop of cells that grew wild
in my bowels—that spread suckers to liver
and lung—experts have their predictions
about that fruit, too.  Few expect me to taste the distant
spring’s berries.

So why plant them?
Why turn the clay of our natural soil shovel by shovel,
mixing in dark amendments?  Why cultivate
and water and surround with natural deterrents
for our neighborhood’s benign, cotton-tailed marauders?

A more realistic woman, more
practical, might use the space instead for flowers
or greenery—even for the small comfort of ground cover
or the parsimonious sipping of desert grasses.  I am not
she.  I am a woman who plants blackberries, not promised
to taste them.  But hoping.  Yes.

Hoping for the tiny burstings of dark fruit.