City Child #10: Blueberries for Sal

Blueberries for Sal is a 1948 book by Robert McCloskey

Sal on Blueberry Hill puts more blueberries in her mouth

than in her pail: ku-plink, ku-plank, ku-plunk

during school holidays each summer my father would take

my half brother and me upstate to his land near the Canadian border

he was building a geodesic dome we never asked why

or what the ultimate use was for it

my father rarely gave simple answers anyway

it was probably related to Buckminster Fuller’s dome at Queens Zoo

building the dome was a Sisyphean task 

every winter the materials would be stolen so every summer he’d start again

I saw the dome project as a deliberate form of recreation

rather than a construction project: a camping trip focused on blueberries

there were fields of them growing wild and copious in the Flat Rock area

ripening over time in my imagination, sweetened by distance and nostalgia

each day from the undulating blue hills, we ate as much as we picked our lips

tongue, fingers stained blue our heads buzzing from the heat

my then stepmother made blueberry jam and blueberry pancakes

on the little camping stove we’d brought along

we fished for trout and catfish with worms and sticks

cooking the sweet bitter flesh over a campfire

always on the lookout for the elusive Golden Eagle

a huge raptor that circled the field

there were said to be bears though no one ever saw one

maybe they were kept away by our slobbery dogs

at some point we stopped going

my father’s third marriage was faltering 

my stepmother wasn’t well 

Dad got tired of the endless rebuilding 

my dad still owns the land, he says he’s leaving it to me

and my half-brothers but I don’t think it truly exists