“What I’ll think about in winter”
by Jessica Pizzo Brix
A bevy of swans approaches,
thunderous white cloud over Delaney Pond.
It’s December, and while nothing is frozen,
the earth is hard.
Alleys of ferns and mugwort
have given their last bow.
Sharp-winged barn swallows have flown south,
and the beavers at Horse Meadow
have boarded up their lodge for winter.
Harvard is the color of straw, wheat and flax
tinged with snowflakes and rot,
prophets of what lies ahead.
But today,
I’m thinking of strawberries, sirens of the season, pulled
like rubies from the ground at Old Frog Pond.
The tart explosion of blueberries,
moving fistful to mouth,
wayward from any bucket’s fate.
The warm flesh of a Carlson’s peach,
a vibrant reminder that we’re alive and dust, at once.
Raspberries, oh raspberries, noblest of summer fruits.
To demand a delicate touch while being plucked
from prickly vines, mere minutes before meeting their fate
as finger hats.
Plums from Westward Orchards
bearing names of heroes and knights –
Santa Rosa, Castleton and Red Heart –
and baked into frangipane.
The scent of a thousand Italian summers
in my very own backyard.
These gifts live on,
preserved in time and the literal sense
as jams, pies and in the freezer below. I’ll dip into them,
savor their muted perfume
and imagine myself among the
cosmos and goldenrod again.
For now, the swans approach their journey's end:
a half-frozen pond where pickerel and bass
lay sleeping below, their winter wings
keeping every kind of time.
