Rebecca Hawkes

Harvest

i
down here there isn’t enough sun for strawberries
and the birds are tough nuts anyway shredding
through your mother’s fortress of protective nets
so you have to eat the berries when they are pale
green and practically flavourless
or not at all

ii
the raspberries fare better because they ripen quickly
if you check the plot every day you can beat the birds
but even so you must pull them apart bead by bead
until you find the drupe with the caterpillar curled in it
or in boldness eat the berry whole playing grub roulette
as to whether you taste the rubbery glyph of extra protein
when the berry bursts its soft grenades 

iii
the blackberries are always sweet
though banned from the garden
and hacked back they claw their way
up the steep bank at the roadside
so with both of your hands holding your shirt out
shaping a makeshift bowl for berries that stain
your clothes purple with a wealth of soaked up light
it is slow going through the choke of thorns
laying their barbs to your wrists and thighs and throat
you are lost in the thicket like an escaped princess
realising she may never return to her tower
while the birds keep circling low and patient overhead

Drought

even pissing doesn’t make water sounds
a frazzled sizzle in the dirt like frying bacon

sheep with nothing to do but keep grazing
nibble the dust in every direction ochre

too listless to eyeball the shepherd
zipping himself up to mutter fuck this bloody place

the family has stopped burning things
but the kids are picking through scorched rubbish remnants

paper metal glass plastics the four crucial human elements
incinerated into mingled clots of nonsense treasure

his children’s fingers soft with pale ash and incandescent filaments
he misses the freedom of burning

when their lived filth disappeared like magic
and the rich black smoke plumed higher than the mountains

its smell comforting like the half remembered beard
he’d press his wet face into as a boy

well if tears could water the grass
this place would be so green

he’d have to grit his teeth and spit against its charity
while lambs ballooned from the moistened earth like mushrooms 

when he tries to rest his children find him cooling
in the shed among the other rusted tools