Concord

at leaf lift, fat fruit falling
            to hand, bubble-headed bird
                        secrets glass-blown
hard seed heart, tongue-crushed

sweet bloom-end narcissi, sugar holding
            scent-heavy fence brambler,
                        branch brawny shoulders,
            twiggy hands, mouth of its violet

kiss—or even darker, a velvet sheen
            pearl or nacre first snow-
                        gleam glove-cleared, rubbed,
            thumb-polished, this

untended flower mouth bee-stung
            berry, this love honey tumble
                        sweet thicket, autumnal
            tendril, unmeditated

yield; this nonetheless late gleaning,
            a transcendental century
                        and a half hence its cold Massachusetts
            roots, declension of vitis Labrusca,

black fox grape the native wilding,
            frontier now of my tillage, my
                        viticulture, my clean Ball jars,
            my Northern thrift, my lyric

husbandry—plump bushels all this unbroken
            afternoon sheared from vine and cane:
                        swoon plummy and beguiled
            into my marveling palms—

Copyright © 2007 by Lisa Bickmore. This poem appeared in Hunger Mountain Review, Fall 2007, Issue 11. Used with permission of the author.