Nova Scotia Part I - Blueberries

A husband and wife set out across a field with nothing pressing against them. With each step their bodies eased, their shoulders loosened, and their heads lifted. Their spirits spread out and out and out across the field and didn’t run into anything. They stretched their legs and swung their arms and breathed deep until they came to a line of trees.

When they reached these trees the man counted seven down from the right until he found two trunks close together, tall like dance partners on an empty floor. The man and woman fell to their knees, brushed the grass with their fingers, and just below the surface, hanging like many happy bubbles, they found blueberries.

The blueberries fell easily into their palms, came willingly at the slightest touch of their fingers. The husband coaxed them off the stems two and three at a time and then popped them into his mouth. The wife took her time. She combed the patch looking for the fattest, roundest clusters and piled them into her hand little by little. They rolled around like jolly little men, blue from too much laughter. And then she sat, at the edge of the field, with her ever expanding spirit, and ate the blueberries, one mouthful at a time.