Elders (and betters?)

I encourage elder trees to grow wherever they pop up but often the berries don't amount to much. Not this one though, it's got a splendid crop some of which I'll use for jelly or cordial or vinegar.

As often,  I searched to see if someone with a poetic gift had  written apposite words in connection with my image. I found this poem which really appealed to me, evoking as it does those long hot aimless childhood days of late summer. Even more so when I found that the writer, contemporary American poet Ellen Stone,  had a mother who suffered from mental illness which explains her 'absence' in the poem.

Elderberries

On the way to the cemetery,
late summer gravel road, fine covering
of dust layers chicory, Queen Anne’s lace.
We search for angels sent to graves too soon.
Clamber up smooth granite tombstones
in the shade of old oaks saluting
the Underhills, Ackleys, Shumways.
The grass under our feet is dry, reserved.

We try not to yell as we cannonball
off headstones, rising out of the quiet,
rectangular and flat -- miniature buildings
in an empty city. One shiny stone
has a sausage shaped roll on top.
We ride it like a bronco, ready to dive
off if a mourner drives up with trowel
and chrysanthemums to plant at its base.

Tired, sweaty, walking through baking
heat, we see giant elderberry bushes
rising from the deep cornfield edge,
crowns of tiny deep purple fruit
cupped skyward. We pluck the inky heads,
snapping them off at their base, carry home
armloads staining our shirts and hands.
Mom makes elderberry jelly when she is up

with us standing over the blue stove,
stirring, waiting for the juice to slowly seep
out of the berries. We will sort and clean
sitting together, our feet touching back
and forth on the front porch swing.
We bang noisily through the front door.
The house is quiet, dirty dishes on the table.
Mom is absent, nowhere to be seen.

We disperse, leave a tangle of berries
in the sink. One of us will pick through them later,
sorting out the good from the bad, before
Dad gets home, the smell of the juice rising
into the steamy air of the kitchen, familiar,
pungent and puckery, the way we think
wine must taste when we’re responsible
enough to drink, old enough to understand.


The poet has herself worked with troubled adolescents -see here, plus a link to the poem read by herself.