July brings us the "blues" every year

Picking the berries that you hold so dear
 

Your offspring were never very enthused

Feeling their free-time was being abused
 

"Just one more basket"...and then one more bowl

With filling the freezer the ultimate goal
 

No bother about the bees or the bears

Those berries are ours not theirs
 

A few million bug bites were a small price to pay

For low-cost meditation done the pioneer way
 

One thing for sure that cannot be matched

Was the smile on your face while in a bountiful patch
 

No matter.  When all is said and done

No one refused your blueberry jam and Finn bun.

Footprints  - Tom Leduc

On top of blueberry hill

I shovel a handful of berries

into my mouth and look out across

the city’s landscape. 

Green leaves adrift on an ocean of rock

coloured shingles hidden in the swells

people thriving in the wake of industry.

It wasn’t always this way. 

In the early seventies, astronauts trained here

came to see what we were geologically made of

and inadvertently left their footprints

on the backs of our miners.                                                                                      

Rumours grew like moss on stone

and the world likened us to the moon.

People said nothing could ever grow here

but I grew here and so did these berries

these tiny blue moons, these sweet tears of the sky.  

I pick another one of these pale blue dots

place it in the universe of my hand

and consider all we have done. 

I pop the world into my mouth

taste the history of our hard labour.

We’ve left our footprints

on the moon and beyond.

 

Old Metal Cup  - Tom Leduc  

Our knees the pattern of mossy rocks 

the back of our necks burnt, red and raw,

sweat glistening on our skin like stars,

baskets brimming with blue barriers. 

We stumbled towards the trail, arching

our backs, stretching the kinks from our muscles,

chugging cool water from a metal thermos,

quenching thirsts, long forgotten by the body.  

My Memere carries two wooden baskets

bursting with berries in each hand.

I listen as she recounts stories of her youth  

in her rugged trail language of French and English.  

She gave me an old metal cup to fill.

What I didn’t eat while picking

was poured in a bowl with milk and sugar

and I’d always sneak another cube.  

While I ate, she’d wash and clean the barriers

a handful at a time. Her small, soft hands

picking leaves and stems, inspecting

each berry as if she were reading my palm.  

She’d separate the green ones from the blue ones,

bake muffins, paint jams, and compose

pies into refined masterpieces, never once

savouring a single berry for herself.

Haiku Poems - Oksana Kurliw

Blueberries twixt the rocks
Sheltered from the shimmering sun
Summer gems hiding

 

Picking blueberries
Remembered joy of summer
Indigo jewels

 

Blueberries dazzle

Dressed up in cobalt blue

Wild! Mother Nature’s gift

 

Blueberry fingers

Prickling shrubs leaving their marks

Plucking the best

The Fairy Berries - Ella Curtis

Oh, special berries that are picked  

for me and you. 
 

From the rocks of Sudbury, 

so juicy and blue. 

 

Step lightly around these 

precious blueberries, 

 

and be sure not to 

startle the fairies. 

 

 

Blueberry Hill - Austin Kurtis

 

 

We walk for miles, it seems,

 

In the morning sun to avoid the afternoon heat.

 

Through a small path in the woods,

 

Made by cows before people, and used sparingly since the advent of grocery stores

 

With a hand radio blasting Blue Rodeo’s latest single, “Try”.

 

“It’s for the bears,” you say - which makes me nervous. 

 

 

On a ridge, overlooking a crystal clear, sapphire lake, we stop.

 

“I used to drive the cows home from here,” you tell me for the 100th time.

 

I know.

 

“Ok, start picking”.

 

It isn’t a suggestion.

 

Although not yet 10, I know what to do:

 

Find the clumps, and pick with two hands. 

 

 

I sneak mouthfuls of the still cold, fresh berries

 

Made plump and juicy by the relentless July sun.

 

“How full is your bucket?”

 

She knows the answer, but asks anyways;

 

I look up sheepishly. 

 

 

We pick for hours, it seems,

 

Until the cold morning turns to a sweltering afternoon

 

And our former neapolitan ice cream buckets are full.

 

Only then, will we stop to admire our work

 

Over a lunch of cheese sandwiches,

 

Carefully wrapped with wax paper -

 

And maybe a Coca Cola, if I’m lucky.