August 2016
Laurel Peterson
laurelpeterson@att.net
I’ve been writing since I was eight, despite being told that I shouldn’t. Writing revealed too much. This is why I tell my students they should never be afraid to put the truth on the page. I’m a community college English professor, who alternately loves and despairs of her students. I’ve written lots of different things—newspaper columns, academic stuff, poems (including two chapbooks and a forthcoming full-length collection) and a couple of mystery novels, one of which will be published this spring by Barking Rain Press. I have the very great pleasure of serving the town of Norwalk, Connecticut, as its poet laureate. At this very moment, my dog is sniffing through my trash for a draft of something to chew on. ​ My website:  www.laurelpeterson.com
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A Field of Black Raspberries


Always, they leave bloody freckles.
Two years ago, you mowed the meadow,
beheading canes, grasses,
bottle gentian, bergamot, red clover,
black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, flowering oregano.
Undeterred, this year,
whatever the magic
of wet and dry, heat and cool,
acid and sweet,
tiny berries erupted everywhere.
The drupelets hide in clumps
under serrated leaves;
I pull them off in multiples,
ripeness a burgundy film on my fingers.
 
No human design prevails—only
the invisible furniture of cleared or shaded,
abandoned woodpile,
the enchantment of wind, sun and mist,
conditions the cheese-maker we visited
two days past controls so carefully;
each modest difference
in rennet, temperature, acidity, humidity
produces a sheep’s milk version of brie, say,
or a semi-hard cheese, its rind edible and chewy.
 
My meadow with its acid-base, rocky-clay,
dry-open-hot recipe
shoots up spiky canes
whose slender barbs needle under the skin,
almost invisible,
except for the tender red swell,
like the hot muscle of my heart.
originally published in Slant (Summer 2012)
©2016 Laurel Peterson
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