DEDICATION TO THE BOOK was first published in Spirit (Seton Hall University) Spring issue, 1969. It later formed the introductory poem in the book New and Selected Poems (Iris Press, 1977.) Finally it was republished in the George Scarbrough special issue of Spirit, Fall/Winter issue 1984.

DEDICATION TO THE BOOK

Because man, slow-seeded in
orchards of past time, meadow-marrowed,
kerneled in wild upland groves, flushed
with redolent resins of fluent
vine, stalk, and that most elegant
fixture of landscapes, the inexpressible
tree, is neither more nor less than
a walking berry, a perambu-
lating garden premise,

I sign my book to all pomes and
drupes, especially to drupelets: first,
as logic dictates, to all apples,
whether plain or golden,
guarded or given: to rose-
hip, redhaw, crab McIntosh, Jon-
athan, and stark confections: all genres
and kinds shining in the
gothic under-

glow of the world’s wood:
to the granulous, gravitational pear as
well: post-axial: paradigm of slow
natural forces: pulling like a green-
gold drop of sun earthward from its
black tether, or a drop of its own
amber syrup from a cypress paddle,
already congealed in a sandy,
immortal sweetness

only the Greek word bears;
second, to all drupes: cluster, bob,
and single: to peach rosy as a
morning cloud, to varicolored
cherry, to plum, greengage,
garden, or otherwise: the wild
not least: to apricot, divided in
its unity, perfect in
its male beauty: and

to all unnamed, but most
especially to those named in this
willow country mountain grove of
my nativity; and so, last,
to all drupelets: the berries:
true nativity gifts: among them,
first, as all considerations demand,
the significant blackberry,
light-cheeked and

naturally ironic, that stim-
ulated boy to man: without whose gleam-
ing sprays, from first to almost last,
the mind had not matured to mythic
possibility and concomitant irony,
chemistries both in body and in
soul; to the uncultivated purple wood and
fencerow grape: native,
ubiquitous fox,

summer, and/or fall: which
I never knew: cousins-german to the mus-
cadine, pachyderm of the untamed vinous
tribe: whose essence nonetheless
taught me the quiddity of synesthesia:
I savor color still with my crossed
senses; to the delectable wild straw-
berry "beaming seraphic in
Its bed": which,

mashed on turtle’s beak,
divided in bird’s claw, has yet
the look of "hedgehog or of star":
which, "doubtless, God could have
made a better berry than, but
doubtless never did": on April slopes,
beside the blue-green, copper-born
Ocoee, set with grander
gifts than Solomon’s

lawns detailed with all
the gifts of Araby; to the rasp-
berry shriveled in the full beam
of summer like an old leather
button: which yet becomes the
Renaissance heart of a Sunday pie;
to the nonsensical gooseberry,
which by any other name,
currant of saxi-

frage, would taste only
as sweet as a gooseberry ever does
to a hungry boy: green as the
sap of a green stalk, almost
pure chlorophyl, but especially
grateful on a hot day in the hills
where it ripens in a wholly sensible
way the summer long; to
the mulberry then, the

dewberry, service-berry, the
partridge berry, even the bastard fig,
mule of the drupes or of the
drupelets (Who knows?), caught
somewhere between but bound to
be included: unlike a mule in that
it procreates itself: full of seeds
and sweetness, yet with a name
signifying nothing;

and last in the roll call of
my visionary vegetables, the blue-
berry combed cold from mountain bush
on limy ledges where the cruelly
beautiful but not cruel snake
adds to the bough’s abundance the
tender life of birds, and bogeys me,
the interlocutor, man, who must have
his rattle, even in Eden.

©George Scarbrough, 1969, 1977, 1984.

George Scarbrough comments: "I was born into a county of pomes, drupes, and druplets, which is to say, into a place of gardens and orchards, those fixtures of landscape which first acquainted me with the elixirs of the seasons—flesh and juice of fruits succulent enough to make a god groan. That was long ago, but those first tastes, I remember. This poem was written in celebration years after the events but still valid for my reaction to all fruits and berries.