Cloudberries

by Michael Longley

Drawings by Patrick Redmond

You give me cloudberry jam from Lapland,
Bog amber, snow-line titbits, scrumptious
Cloudberries sweetened slowly by the cold,
And costly enough for cloudberry wars
(Diplomatic wars, my dear).
Imagine us
Among the harvesters, keeping our distance
In sphagnum fields on the longest day
When dawn and dusk like frustrated lovers
Can kiss, legend has it, once a year. Ah,
Kisses at our age, cloudberry kisses.

© Michael Longley

From A Hundred Doors (Cape Poetry, 2011)

Republished from 100 Prized Poems: Twenty-five Years of the Forward Books (Faber & Faber, 2016)