Strawberries

Melanie Ehler Collopy

for Amy

Do you still dream

of things you’ve lost?

Sky does not hesitate

its ceaseless fall

of snow, which gathers and glints

on the ground, two inches deep,

white effacing fields, erasing streets,

as though everything

once our vision descried

no longer exists. I know

it is impossible, just now,

to taste the wild strawberries

I crave. From memory’s shadows,

the day we found them blazes

like light issued through prism.

How instructions given by parents—

do not go near Tony Jester’s house—

kindled inspiration, and we walked

from your place into the feral

back lots behind Tony’s,

upholding obedience in letter only

while breaking any spirit

that dared bind us.

Sun-bleached weeds reached

waist high, and higher

and we parted them like Moses

passing dreamily through the Red Sea.

We were looking for nothing

when we found strawberries.

What I mean is, our minds

were open, though bound by sight.

Years have passed since last

we’ve spoken, but how might

we ever untangle our lives,

having met in tenderness,

aged six and five?

I like to believe you

wandered back to the wild

lots alone, unknown to me,

to revisit that sweetness.

Years have passed since

last I’ve been home,

so when the snow falls,

I can only imagine how it gathers

and glistens above your bones,

and upon your headstone.

Blood-bright was the sweet

fruit eaten in Eden,

the daintiest red hearts,

the bittiest red hearts,

drooping from the ends

of such long, green stems.

MELANIE EHLER COLLOPY, an Australian citizen with Swedish residency, has publications in various journals, including fourW34 Anthology for New Writing, the ACU Prize for Poetry Anthology, and Heroines Anthology, and a memoir piece in the book Female Nomad and Friends. She was the 2022 Mindshare Established Poet Winner.