I guess everybody knows that Seamus Heaney died about a week ago in late August, at the start of the blackberry season. This photograph is a tribute to him and his poem Blackberry Picking. He was quite the person.
His son Michael revealed at the funeral mass that his father’s final words, “Noli timere” (Latin: “Do not be afraid”), were texted to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died. He was quite the person alright.
Who would have thought canfuls and glutting were actual words and how about ingurgitating! Not that anybody around here eats like that. All in all quite the person – with words and as himself.
Now then, what happened to the book of his poems I was sent?
A breeze picked up
blew the unripe berries
out of focus.
Well timed I thought.
I must look him up now. And then go outside for a handful of raspberries.
Yum! Still raspberries around where you are then.