For I am done with currant picking now

It’s blackcurrant picking time again. I’m pushing barrow loads of fruit laden branches up the path to harvest them in comfort on the deck when leaking from the radio in the kitchen come Robert Frost’s sonorous voice: , ‘But I am done with apple picking now’.

The black currant jungle at the rear of my wild garden bears an enormous crop and most of it I leave for the birds - there’s only so much room in my apple barrel - sorry, freezer. Last year, my neighbor told me his young daughter had said over breakfast ‘Isn’t it time Jeannie made some more blackcurrant jam?’

Unlike many of the critics, I don’t read anxiety into Frost’s poem - my reading is tempered with my approach to gardening, writing and being old. There will never be the time or energy sufficient to harvest everything. I may never finish my first full length novel. Most of the blackcurrants will be eaten by birds. My laptop is full of scabby stories and poems that are bound for the cider heap. Seen through the frosted pane of age it matters less and less. It matters that I have this day.

.The big sleep is coming.