Each spring last year’s raspberries canes have to be pruned out, leaving only the energetic new canes and spacing those generously. It’s tedious but meditative work. Choices must be made, depending on where we want these slowly migrating raspberries to move, which canes seem robust–decisions, decisions.
It’s nowhere near as difficult as editing a manuscript–I don’t have to worry about the narrative arc or character development, whether or not some scene or detail truly contributes to the main theme.
This conjunction of garden work and writing appears towards the end of one of my poems, “Resolve”:
I’ll till images
edit weeds
prune back the wild rose
cut out dead raspberry canes
poem the yard,
attend to the children,
the laundry, the compost.
Attend.
