All June
and July, berries,
enough berries, more
than enough, berries for the birds
and us! Each morning
we’d go out in the still
and savor, marveling
in low sunlight at their burgeoning
abacus, subtracting
the ripest, the best.
 
Now Carolina August
and only a few
remain, ones we’d have passed
over, or thrown away, it only seems
moments before. Yet we pluck,
and find, in their barely
bitter, a remembered
flavor, then happen upon one
cluster our soured mouths swear
the sweetest of the season.

This poem first appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review.
Used here with the author's permission.