It’s strawberry season, and what a balm their warm, red sweetness is in the sun. This week’s poem, by Frank Freeman, celebrates both those berries and a sublime collective joy in plucking them up together. I love how this poem moves along in a delighted stream-of-consciousness, and how it ends – in deep and simply – expressed gratitude.

Freeman’s poetry has been published in The Aroostook Review, The Axe Factory, The New York Quarterly, SN Review and Tiger’s Eye, and his book reviews have been published widely. Freeman grew up in Texas, Connecticut and California, received a bachelor’s degree in English from Texas A&M and a master’s in English from Northeastern University. He lives in Saco with his wife and four children.

Picking Strawberries With My Children In A Gentle Rain

By Frank Freeman

Whoever made all this, I think,
while picking the bright red seeded fruit
amid the glistening leaves, rain
trickling down my neck, my children
gloriously proclaiming, look
how many we’ve picked and how
it’s okay if black dirt clings
to the strawberries, you can wash
the dirt off, me picking
and piling them in my rolled-up
sweatshirt, amazed at how excited we all are,
looking forward to strawberry rhubarb
pie (I’ve also sliced off five crisp stalks
of rhubarb, the elephant-ear leaves
of which the children have warned me,
more than once, are poisonous), whoever
made all this sure has a powerful
streak of good.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Picking Strawberries With My Children in a Gentle Rain,” copyright by Franklin Freeman, was published in Axe Factory (2014). It appears by permission of the author.


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