Tiring of cans and paper soups
we left camp for a mythic town
named by an RV captain
as he pulled out, “Blueberry City.”
Ten, fifteen miles downhill,
old lumber roads, spindly woods,
I saw into the children’s minds
visions of chocolate soda, comics,
kids to stare at, maybe talk to.
My dreams were bunches of broccoli,
fresh fish, summer squash.
Finally a few cars in a clearing.
Hey folks, how far is Blueberry City?
This IS Blueberry City.
Git out and start pickin.
Two caps, a bag, a strange pot
we called Frelenhausen’s Hat
from a Pogo strip.
Someone warned us, Pick together
and keep talking. When his wife failed
to answer, he saw a bear picking
the other side of the bush.
So we pick bag, caps, Frelenhausen
full, even after the rain started.
Turned back at last with our treasure,
the kids too tired to remember
their earlier Main Street hopes.
The last miles up the mountain
twilit pale with snow.
Camp almost empty, though two girls
rushed past us, calling back
A bear in the latrine!
My daughter nine years old, her heart
on books and bicycles, sat on a log
by the fire between two stones
where our stew heated in the hat
(Frelenhausen’s) while the boys
sorted the piles of blueberries
in snow and icewater.
I said to my little girl, Remember
this: maybe the happiest hour of our life.
Snow beading on her dark lashes,
the child stared at her mad mother.
With an icy hand and woolen sleeve
she rubbed at the hot tears
for a future so appalling:
nothing ever to hope for finer
than a trip to Blueberry City,
bears in the bathroom,
stew heating on a hobo fire.