Blackberry-Picking
This poem does not just give a literal description of picking blackberries but a
deeper understanding of the whole experience.
It is said in this poem that in the late August, even in the rain, they would pick
blackberries and put them in milk cans, pea tins, and jam pots. These given lines seem to
be saying that picking these berries are basically these peoples lives. They know
everything about them from their color to how to put them inside the bucket.
This poem, I see it in two different ways. One way I see it is basically somebody
picking black berries for a living and that they have done it so long that they know every
little detail about them. And another in deeper experience I see this poem as someone that
could be comparing black berries to something or somebody. I see it this way because in
lines 20-23 it quotes “The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush the fruit fermented,
the sweet flesh would turn sour. I was always felt like crying, It wasn’t far that all the
lovely canfuls smelt of rot.” How I see that this could be explaining friendship because in
these few lines they are talking about how blackberries, sweet flesh, would turn sour. Just
like people can change just as fast. As in friendships, because as of friends you don’t
want them to turn into something bad you want them to stay there forever just the way
you like them. But when something goes wrong and your friend starts to drift off with a
new crowd its just like that one bad blackberry that had to go rot. And when this
situation happens then you just feel like crying. It’s a shame that something so lovely and
so good and ripen can just change and rot into something totally different just like people
and friendships can do and usually.
So when you think of blackberries and how their farmers have to take good care
of them and hope they don’t rot, Then, You can also think of a friendship and how a
friend does not want another friend to do things that are bad and to make them to turn
into a very bad person. Rotten Blackberries are like friends that join into the wrong
groups. We don’t want it to happen but sometimes it does so you always want to be there
to check up on them and always be there for them so they can both stay good.
So this poem to me has a metaphor of blackberries comparing to friendships and
how people can just change in a split second. Especially good will and always can turn
into something bad if you don’t help to prevent it.