All week we’ve been trying to accomplish the blueberry picking outing with Wave. Finally, this afternoon, under a cloudy sky, in the humid air, we drove to the farm that’s located just across the street from the street I grew up on, across town, Brush Hill Road, and where we also lived for years in a different house on Brush Hill with our own three children. Wave, his mom and I put on our rain boots and drove down Brush Hill past both houses and lots of memories to get to the farm. And the blueberries were mad plentiful and ripe and we picked two pints and only one pint was spilled in the process, and then picked back up from the soft clean grass so it wasn’t so tragic. When are blueberries picked by hand without spillage? It’s part of the process. The cakes, however, have not yet been baked. We have all the ingredients, however, finally. All of them! And I dug out the recipe from my aunt’s recipe book, the blueberry cake my mother always baked, and showed the messy old page of the recipe to Wave and he asked why it’s so dirty. Because cooking is messy, of course. And today my poem, Beach of Hvar with Po, that won 3rd place in the Common Ground Review’s contest was published, and you can read it here, and read the comments by the judge, poet Rebecca Hart Olander here, if you like. I’m glad to see it in print. I’m thrilled at Rebecca’s comments.

"This poem feels quietly epic, earthy, cyclical, and beautiful."

—Rebecca Hart Olander, Poetry Judge, Common Ground Review Summer Issue