The First Berries
I rose on unsteady legs
and hobbled down the steps
to pee in the bamboo thicket,
and seeing a dark, ripe blackberry, picked it and brought it you
in your summer bed, where you lay, already sweating You said, “Thanks, but the first berries are not for us, and it is best to wait”
and I thought how you teach me
all the time, with a modest, impersonal tact, if nothing else, what I don’t already know, from a kind of forgotten, integral conduct Later, I saw that you left
the