Raspberry Picking

The invitation came as a surprise.

The old philosopher had buttoned his coat, gathered a sieve,

and was waiting for me by the farm door.

Rain hung in the air, dappled sunlight struck leaves

through dispersed and fattened Normand clouds.

Down the overgrown road, around the bend

to the raspberry wall, we began our slow walk.

Three years ago I asked the philosopher's wife

to read a text called The Smell of Apples

which described how the fruit, kept in old crates

in the cellar reminds us of a past we no longer deserve.

I did not know that this was the last time I would see her.

Nor did I know that apples paved the philosopher's childhood

and their existence, that the road to their house

overspilled with these two fruits,

until here for the first time, I saw, smelled, and picked them.

Now she is two years gone and

the philosopher's steps are steady, but slowing.
His hand rises to gently press the hair at the back of his head.

His voice is ceremonious, and deeply toned.

You have to look, he says, for the berries that fall

from the vine at a light touch - this is how to know they are ready.

He shows where the best ones are, les plus belles.

He brings the bowl closer as my greedy hands become
too full. It ripens with their deep color.

The only sound is of his hands pushing away leaves.

We lift, duck, and gently pull.

You always find more when you look below.

There is the occasional surprise of a wild strawberry, tiny and brazen,

armed with more seeds than flesh.

He teaches me this:

You have to collect enough for the family table,

but also, to tip into the kind neighbor's bowl.

Above all, you must leave enough on the vine

for tomorrow, and trust that they will not

be ruined by the rain.

Later, we gather at the table. A little way off

the image of his wife smiles from a frame.

You have to hope, believe and smile, and work with this, it says.

Our spoons rattle the plates with the delight

of the raspberries, their deep color dashed across the white.

The house is quiet except for this sound.

I accuse myself of loving fruit too much, but here it is:

our acts reduce to small movements, our pleasures, small pleasures.

There is not much else above the tiny pleasures of the earth.

We do not know tomorrow. I can only hope that

tomorrow I will find myself on my knees again, in search of more.

At the Richard Avedon Exhibit in Paris

This room echoes with shuffling feet.

Speakers of all languages

come to pay reverence

to the geography of the human face

and there are more luminaries
of modern culture than I can count:

Marianne Moore, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote.

All are rendered in life-sized black and white,
with crisp lines, and caught mid-expression, as if talking, reciting, playing,
going on unaware of the tool intended to stop time fixed on their movements.

First there is Beckett, dignified, taller than I am.
I wait for him to hold out his hand for me to shake,
or to loan me his pocket-kerchief. On another wall, Louis Armstrong vibes so fully his eyes are blurred, Marianne Moore in a three cornered hat looks to be in the middle of a recitation.

Marilyn Monroe has been caught looking down in the only moment of doubt and fear

I have ever seen shown on her face,and there is Malcolm, steadily staring the camera down,
and it goes on...

What strikes me is how

all are alive in this room.

These shapers of our culture- all are dead

and yet collected, beyond death, they make a symphony of their influence.

One face draws my curiosity:

it is closed in emotion, in a moment of total honesty and complete absorption,
the beard is pointed, the face dear, and I approach to study the lines

not knowing I am looking at the father of modern poetry.
Ezra Pound, the plaque says, is at Williams' house
hours before his final expatriation.
I did not recognize him with his eyes contorted with memory, his mouth mid-word.

I want to hold his hand and pat his tired cheeks,
tip back in a rocking chair on that porch
and ask about leaving, arriving, hope, fear, and reason.
And for no reason, I have to leave the room so the Parisians
don't see my weak American tears.

Even his portrait artist is gone now, dead four years,
and for the first time I understand the equation
vita brevis, ars longus .

They, who are outlived by their portraits seem to be outlived
by their very souls, and we, fortunate enough to know them again,
take in their eyes, and carry them on,
their weightless weight.