Ode to the Humble Huckleberry
a poem from the professor:
Oh, Huckleberry, blue as the Hound you endowed with your name:
How do we invoke the language to properly honor
The hard-won sweetness of your indigo bulge,
the bright citrus flash behind your ubiquitous navel?
Drenched in Deep-Woods Off, bearing jury-rigged milk jugs
We hie off to the secret glade, like initiates at Vesta's altar
Led by the High Priestess and her Minion
Hoodwinked, and led by the hand into the stooping rites of Huckleberry Hill
At first, we think: "Damn. One frickin' berry every forty feet.
Like Sal and her cub-friend, we kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk
until suddenly, 'twixt the fallen trees and mosquito clouds
We find it--Shangra Huckin' La, with berries at every turn
My Huckleberry Mojo comes and goes, but as the time comes to leave
to return to the abandoned children at the cabin, weeping in their squalor
my empty carton has become a stained-glass window of red, blue, dew-dropped purple
And I must turn back one more leaf, then one more, a crack-whore praying to the future pie.
Comments
Cool.
You described perfectly the yearly emotions that we Lyons experience when we search for the elusive Huckleberry. Bravo!