I wrote this poem in 2013, between nursing babies and losing sleep. Recently I felt inspired to dig this poem up and prune and graft and make it into perhaps the poem it would have become had I had more free time and fewer babies to hold.
I love the first version, because of the story it tells. I love how it is weaving several stories together- a story of the couple in the field, and the other of the workers and what the narrator imagines and then feels ashamed of for imagining. I think it has a lot of words, maybe too many?
It even takes me lots of words to write about that version.
I can remember taking at least 3 hours- maybe more- writing that day, feeling a poem letdown was as undeniable and embodied as the letdown that comes with nursing a baby. I had a baby and a two year old at the time, and I was never not tuned in to what they needed.
Anyway, I had to write it.
Six years later, only the second time in my adult life that I stood before seated people and nakedly read my writing out loud, my dear friend Andrea, who I had shared the poem with, located this file on her computer and sent it to me when I was lost and anxious and felt I had no writing to share. My knees would not stop knocking as I read it into a microphone, criticizing it in my mind as I spoke, but also hoping it would touch someone in the room.
One of my teachers, Ann Bradney, wrote an email to our little school of Radical Aliveness practitioners after that weekend and referenced my poem. I remember being so surprised that it had any impact at all.
This newer version was inspired by reading a Facebook friend’s story of strawberry picking this June. I don’t know what moved me to uproot the original and help it become more of itself. I do know I have more time these days to devote to writing now that the baby I had strapped to my back while writing version one is about to turn 12. Maybe I am bolstered by a new-ish daily practice of reading poems (thank you Poetry Unbound) and maybe it’s because my poetry lamp was relit by the experience of creating poems with young people this past school year. I don’t need to know why to know that I think that what emerged is something exquisite.
I wish there was like a time-lapse video version of all the edits (this time around I spent probably 9 hours with the poem.) It felt like how sculptures seem to emerge from raw marble. I discovered that the more I stayed with it and talked with it- respecting the original but also knowing that it yearned for a new form-the more the poem revealed its true nature to me. I love how it now illuminates the shadows inside the marriage/relationship the narrator finds herself in, and I also think it more elegantly captures the complexity of the farm workers and the way the narrator is changed by the berries several times.
It’s hard to write a poem that endeavors to Say Something About the World and also have it be itself. This time around I let the poem tell me what it wanted to be.
I think that my conversation with it makes the systemic layers more visible in a way that the first version overstated somehow.
I love it now.
But I loved it then too.
Maybe you will like one more than the other?
I would love to know.
The old strawberry poem…
Chosen by Jennifer Johnson 2013
Under the glaring noon sun
we are eager to stretch our car-weary legs.
For miles the signs read “Strawberries- U Pick!”
an unexpected commandment
on white boards hammered into the ground.
We follow the arrows down a hill
imagining we can smell strawberries in the air.
We accept the small baskets from the farmer's wife,
along with instructions about where to pick.
We saunter down to the fields,
already proclaiming the deliciousness
that surely awaits us.
Straw covers long rows of tiny mounds.
Everywhere we look, in every direction
boisterous strawberry plants
burst from the ground.
Extending up and out,
like dancers wildly waving their arms,
they perform a ballet of green, silver & red.
The berries wait to be picked,
& they whisper their yearning
as we stroll through the first row.
We respond- thoughtlessly at first-
dislodging delicate roots in our haste.
Slowing down, we learn to ask the plant’s permission,
learn to gently part the leaves,
our fingertips testing the fruit
for resistance to being chosen.
We learn of ripeness the way we learn everything:
awkwardness evolving into a kind of grace.
I lose sight of you amid the rows
then spot you halfway across the field,
bent at the waist, berry basket in hand.
We wave and smile,
acknowledging this quiet communion.
In the lower field, where we have been told not to go,
several men, with big woven baskets strapped to their sides,
lean alongside a silver pick-up truck.
Others kneel beside dozens of wooden crates
filled with green cardboard trays of bright red berries.
My pickings seem meager in comparison
yet I am filled for a moment with tenderness-
for our unlikely visit to these fields,
for the way we cradle our berries
as though we're the first
to happen upon this sacred favor.
Selecting one from my flimsy green basket,
I take it in one bite.
I am surprised by its velvety taste,
& surprised by the gifts this tiny berry offers-
the chance to smell rich dirt on our hands,
a sliver of the divine
in a summer of disappointment.
Watching the men load crates
carefully into the back of the truck,
I wonder where the berries are going:
I imagine the men bringing them home,
upending crates of ripe berries on a kitchen table
while wives & children delight in their good fortune,
rejoice together over mountains of fruit.
I don't know if anyone sees me quickly turn away-
foolishness, or something hotter, flaring inside me.
On the ride home, we are silent.
Our strawberries retain the sun’s warmth
and we eat them one after another,
until our hands become sticky with juice
and we cannot bear the thought of any more sweetness.
& the new strawberry poem-
Bearing Fruit by Jennifer Johnson 2024
For miles white crosses implore:
Strawberries! U Pick!
Roadside commandments
hammered into the dirt.
Eager for a distraction, we stop
and follow arrows down a hill.
Given flimsy wooden baskets,
we are shown where to pick.
The sun is climbing as we saunter down
amidst the straw covered rows.
Three-leaved plants extend their arms,
in a ballet of green, silver & red.
At first, our exuberant plucking
dislodges their delicate roots.
Slow down, the berries seem to say.
Ask permission.
I learn of ripeness
the way I learn everything:
awkwardness
evolving into a kind of grace.
Nearly an hour passes
when I spot you three rows away,
examining each plant carefully.
I relish the space between us.
From my own basket,
I select one heart shaped berry-
a taste of the divine
in this summer of disappointment.
In the lower field, men with large baskets at their feet
stand together, laughing and smoking.
They have been here since morning,
commanded by wages, not welcome signs.
A thousand strawberries destined for market
proudly fill cardboard trays
in the back of a farm truck.
Overhead, the sun ripens us all.
I regard my meager pickings
and compare my invisible harvest:
temporary respite from the hard work
of just being human.
For a moment, shame or grief
flares in me, drowning out
what the berries have to say
about all our differences.
On the ride home, our old argument
yawns and stretches in the back seat.
I can’t bear any more sweetness,
but when you offer a berry, I take it.
The first poem transfixed me and then when I arrived at the second one it didn’t have the same flow for me, fast and urgent after the slow meanderings of the first. Perhaps it was the spacing that made the difference for me yet even the first story told drew me closer in to it in a way the second me didn’t. I enjoyed that you shared both with us and I leave richer due to dropping by. Thank you.