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.
My cousin had received this poem with a link to where it had been posted, and she passed it along to me because it reminded her of when we were kids. With my cousins on my mom's side, each summer we would play some version of cowboys and indians (whatever version it was I cannot say), and a lot of it had to do with building forts. My fort was always in a patch of bramble raspberry bushes, and I was usually Princess Wild Flower, or something like that. The location was not the safest, and I was often in my grandparent's house to get doctored up. When I was talking to my grandma about it today, she asked me "Do you remember the first time you really banged yourself up?"
I thought about it, and then I remembered. I was more tramatized by my grandpa's response to me crying than to the blood running down my leg. You see, my grandpa was a medic on the front lines of almost every major, textbook battle in WWII. He was highly decorated for his outstanding service, and was even written about as being a hero. That being said, I remember now how angry he seemed at me for crying over a skinned up knee, and how he told me that if I even knew the things that he saw that I would stomach such petty pain. At the time, I told him I hated him and ran to my parents, but that moment has lasted in me, but I didn't realize it. I changed then. I was not one to cry over bumps and bruises, and I even remember trying so desperately hard to not cry when I ripped off a toe (it was sewed back on, so I'm not too much of a freak). I relived that experience from just a poem that my cousin sent to me because it reminded her of the adventures we would have as a child. I love my grandpa, and though I thought that I hated him then, I now appreciate what he did for me. He inspired me to be tough, which proves that tough love works.
I couldn't find a picture of the whole backyard where we would play, but this is a part of it where one of the last apple trees stands from the old orchard.
Going back to the poem, I thought it was quite appropriate to share it with everyone for a different reason (not just for the sake of fairness). The preface to the poem really struck me because it says this:
American Life in Poetry: Column 126
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
The British writer Virginia Woolf wrote about the pleasures of having a room of one’s own. Here the Vermont poet Karin Gottshall shows us her own sort of private place.
I find it so neat that Dr. Sexson could ignite my memory to recall my Grandma and Grandpa Mason's manicured raspberry patch, which reminds me of the hedgerows in Little Gidding, and then I recalled my Grandpa and Grandma Boe's wild and unruly raspberry patches, which inspired my cousin to email me a poem. The poem's preface shows that a correlation exists between Karin Gottshall, the author, and a previous work by none other than Virginia Woolf (To be Bloomian, perhaps this is an instance of the anxiety of influence?). Dr. Sexson, did you mean to do all of this? :)
My Grandpa and Grandma Boe holding hands.
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