Picking Berries

root 9 Judith Root Picking Berries Heat blurs the morning, mixes with dust the winos lift as they shuffle in the rows. The dust settles, indifferent as weather, on leaves and berries, lips and tongues. It finds the hole the throat is and sticks there, a bad memory that keeps you picking until the berries fill the boxes and the boxes fill the flats. Fat ladies weight the flats, pass the wine you drink in the stringy shade. "Hey, swabby." "Look out, buddy." Your calls float the air hot off Damascus hill. The warm wind slides over bad hands at poker, your mother's letter about the lump, the log caught in Celilo Falls where fish pool like girls whose lips pucker in every berry. The sweet wine sticks in your throat. You pick berries for another bottle to wash the first one down. ...