All our relations
Into deep summer~~ hands sticky with wild raspberry juice and lanced with long scratches from green bristled plants protecting young red mounded berries. Secret fortressed world where daddy-long-legged spiders scuttle after dining on scarlet globes and chickadees stain feathers blood-red as oozing berries turn to wine in cicada-languishing August paradise.
Chipmunks scatter and squirrels endlessly scold, disturbed, annoyed, as raspberry after raspberry pops into open mouth, past a gate of pearly teeth, here’s one, no, two, for the bucket. Oh so hot and yet cool if you drop to your scratched knees down in the thicket and pause amidst your raspberry hut to smell sun-baked sweet berry pie and jam and jelly and to let the cool shade shelter your wild desires until suddenly, so suddenly, you’re not longing for ice cream or whipped cream or any other sweetness because it’s all satiated, eternally satiated, and you lay silent against the cool earth, a mountain for ants to explore. A raspberry plops unbidden from its archipelago high above and you’ll never ever long for anything again, you know it~~
~~except maybe for those ants to quit climbing unto the pinnacle of their own endless desires~~ and you roll over and rise above the chest-high berried paradise and pick another forbidden fruit and another and yet another, singing God’s praises with every sticky sweet bite.
Sigh … I could bask in these lovely words all day. Maybe I will…
Beautiful ~*~
Ahhhhhhhh
Raspberry blessings to you all, Susan D & H and Laurie… May you all worship in their wild homes this summer.
Oh YES!!!!!! Mmmmmm. And OUCH. And OHHHHH!!
Such noise in the raspberry patch, OM! Laughing…want another?
Oh, but yes, I AM longing for ice cream and wild raspberries and sticky hands after reading this. Beautiful! So much for satiated desires…..at least for tonight
Colleen, I often think that if I could just transcend desire then pure Oneness can be experienced. On the other hand, desire can be a vehicle for experiencing Oneness. Once, many years ago, I experienced samadhi in a raspberry patch, becoming the raspberry. Trying to remember it, I find it’s impossible to remember. To merge with the raspberry, the strawberry, the neighbor, the owl, the airplane, the waterfall. To be with it, without an interpretive story. Or can the story be a delight if it’s not taken too seriously, as an absolute? That is another question. I think the desire AND the satiation can be experienced fully…and that is the ultimate satiation. I think I am thinking to much first thing in the morning before coffee. lol!
Kathy, appreciating and resonating with your thoughts and experience. I don’t know how (or if) our conscious memory handles this awareness/experiences. Mine feel like they are there until I try to remember them, then poof, gone. If that make sense.
Maybe this should be a complete spiritual practice in itself, spending time each day just looking at a raspberry, beyond the name that we call it and the stories that we might know around it. It feels right to me
Wow, Kathy… you have such a way with words… it was a an explosion of sounds and images and textures and flavours… bliss!
Your words made me feel like I was there, too, Kathy. Even daddy-long-legs was one with the sweet raspberry… (Exquisite photo!!!)
Reggie, Colleen and Barbara…glad you enjoyed and thank you for your comments. I read this to Barry the other day on the deck and he laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. Guess he thought the raspberry blessings sounded a bit too sensual? smile…
And Colleen, yes, this seems an important spiritual practice. To be so with something like a raspberry–or a person, or a sunrise–until we glimpse beyond its name into Infinity.
Kathy, I don’t think I will ever pick raspberries in the same way again after reading your words. Such poetry ! I would call this mindfulness meditation
Being fully present in doing what you do. You really know how to look at the wide and small world around you. Thank you so much.
I try, Isa, but still too often get lost in the world of thoughts for extended times. This was good mindfulness meditation…longing to live this kind of meditation with every step. Thank you for reading my little blog.
That was perfect! Reminds me of picking Blackberries on my father in laws farm. Thanks for the memories
Blackberries sound luscious, Jessica. I saw a sign on the way to town and was tempted to stop and buy some. No time to pick right now!