Sturdy cotton tote featuring a new poem, “a blueberry long life,” written for the Texas Blueberry Festival 2023 in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Come, my longtime love, when the world

is too fast for us and pack your straw cap

and heavy heart. I know a place old and alive

storied, where the cardinals sing and swoop

on the piney wood edge, where the humming

bees kiss the clover growing crimson and white.

Come, my hand to hold, bring only our treasures

my ancient piano and the quilt your mother made.

We can make home again and just in time

to sow these sights and sounds into dreamlands

and memories: the slow rise of the golden

sun and the last of the firefly glow. 

Oh, let us be felicitous! Let us live free. What could be

more wondrous, more wild than planting the yard

full of blueberries and blackberry bramble?

We’ll throw seeds on every bare patch of clay

like confetti, like our own little party every spring,

and in the summer feast upon the blue fruit of our joy.

What better use of these short lives, my steady one,

than honeysuckle days and nights in the oldest

town around, where the stars still whisper and burn?