Shore Gooseberries
Along your beach where tide's plash-wavelets drown,
cliff fresh above, a grass-bank scissor-torn
abandons salt sand-pebbles, fossiled stone,
where the heath-track runs through the burnlet's dene.
By tufted grass and ragged rose-hip, thorn,
lone gooseberry-tree these golden globes adorn,
unseen before they ripened out of green,
guards the old path, but now its wealth is known.
Attack is imminent, the fruit falls down
as we marauding children backward grown
make good our gain from branches' prickled crown,
appropriate the berries not the scene,
retreat with sweet ingredients for cuisine,
to share, like memories, with you and Jane.
Sally Evans
|