Picking Blueberries
Caitlin Nichols
Remember berry-picking in the summer?
The mild-stinging quiet: sweat, straw, mosquitos, want?
Irregular and definite soft thunking, staining sweet
— the softest gunshot —
purple-blue and warm,
spiced in still, hazy heat.
Caitlin Nichols was born in Georgia, became a writer in South Carolina, and currently lives in Colorado with a B.A. in English from the University of South Carolina Aiken and the ghosts of poems who refuse to live. She is in continually in awe of the way words work and astonished that she works with words for a living.