Woman on Twenty-Second Eating Berries

She's not angry exactly but all business,

eating them right off the tree, with confidence,

the kind that lets her spit out the bad ones

clear of the sidewalk into the street. It's

sunny, though who can tell what she's tasting,

rowan or one of the serviceberries—

the animal at work, so everybody,

save the traffic, keeps a distance. She's picking

clean what the birds have left, and even,

in her hurry, a few dark leaves. In the air

the dusting of exhaust that still turns pennies

green, the way the cloudy surfaces

of things obscure their differences,

like the mock orange or the apple rose that

cracks the paving stone, rooted in the plaza.

No one will say your name, and when you come to

the door no one will know you, a parable

of the afterlife on earth. Poor grapes, poor crabs,

wild black cherry trees, on which some forty-six

or so species of birds have fed, some boy's dead

weight or the tragic summer lightning killing

the seed, how boyish now that hunger

to bring those branches down to scale,

to eat of that which otherwise was waste,

how natural this woman eating berries, how alone.