I’m in the middle of Summer Melancholy and I don’t know why (other than all the unsettling things). This poem gets at that feeling of melancholy in the middle of abundance, and that last line! That last word! Genius.
U-Pick Orchards
by Danusha Laméris
We used to pick cherries over the hill
where we paid to climb wooden ladders
into the bright haven above our heads, the fruit
dangling earthward. Dark, twinned bells
ringing in some good fortune just beyond
our sight. I have lived on earth long enough
to know good luck arrives only on its way
to someone else, for it must leave you to the miracle
of your own misfortune, lest you grow weary
of harvest, of cherries falling from the crown of sky
in mid-summer, of hours of idle. Let there be
a stone of suffering. Let the fruit taste of sweetness
and dust. Let grief your heart split so precisely
you must hold, somehow, a memory of cherries—
tart talismans of pleasure—in the rucksack
of your soul. Taut skin, sharp blessing.
Luminous, ordinary and acute.