Dick Westheimer

Natural Selection

The blackberries that make it back to the house
are not the ones that have left inky stains
on my lips and tips of my fingers, not the ones
whose bunched drupelets are big
as thumbs, not the ones whose sepals
slide easy from the inner recess
of what makes blackberry blackberry.

The ones eaten under the beating sun –
warm as tongues – are like a drug that
makes a man forget his lover waits
at the door for her share, makes him
ignore thorn-ripped skin, makes
this one berry, and then this one berry
and then this one berry all that ever was.

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