Raspberry Fields

The Raspberry Room
by Karin Gottstall

It was solid hedge, loops of bramble and thorny
as it had to be with its berries thick as bumblebees.
It drew blood just to get there, but I was queen
of that place, at ten, though the berries shook like fists
in the wind, daring anyone to come in. I was trying
so hard to love this world—real rooms too big and full
of worry to comfortably inhabit—but believing I was born
to live in that cloistered green bower: the raspberry patch
in the back acre of my grandparents' orchard. I was cross—
stitched and beaded by its fat, dollmaker's needles. The effort
of sliding under the heavy, spiked tangles that tore
my clothes and smeared me with juice was rewarded
with space, wholly mine, a kind of room out of
the crush of the bushes with a canopy of raspberry
dagger—leaves and a syrup of sun and birdsong.
Hours would pass in the loud buzz of it, blood
made it mine—the adventure of that red sting singing
down my calves, the place the scratches brought me to:
just space enough for a girl to lie down.

From poems, to songs, Prince's Raspberry Beret, and those famous raspberry fields. And don't forget raspberry tea, and raspberry tarts. Every year, as surely as spring follows winter, the end of school is closely followed by the advent of canning season. First comes raspberry jam. From ripe, firm berries, to full jars, glistening like jewels on my kitchen counter. There is something eminently satisfying to ending the day to rows and rows of jam that you have produced for the coming year.

Of course, then I had to make bread!