Real Good Pie

Dwindling August, and a perfect sunny Sunday.
They're everywhere, blackberries. I have to barely
step out my door to find as many as I can possibly want.
Some years they're small and hard: all seed. But this year
they're particularly lush, from the right combination
of intense heat and rain. Lucky, we are.

I pick handsful, drop them into the bucket.
Vines entwine me as I creep into the thicket --
the best are always just out of reach, above my head
or behind an immense spider. Some are so ripe
they disintegrate in my fingers. Some are fuzzy
with mold. Some are still red, ensuring berries
on into September.

Every year I make at least one blackberry pie, a ritual
without which I cannot proceed into autumn.
I recall an August Sunday 21 years ago, when I was

lumbering nearly two weeks past my due date with son#2
(son #1 still in diapers). I bribed some neighbor children
to pick berries for me, and rewarded them and their parents
with pie and ice cream. My mother told me that I was
crazy to do all that work on a hot day with an eight-pound
baby pressing to get out, but I just laughed. And ate pie.

What I won't forget, though, is that one of the husbands,
amid the clunking of forks on plates, sidled up to

the gravid me and whispered in my ear:
"I should've married a woman who can bake like you!"

Well. Then.
Never underestimate the Power of Pie.

Awaiting the top crust:



Ready for the oven:


Freshly-baked:


Does it get any better than this?