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​Listen to Danusha Laméris and Dion talk about Danusha's poem on Trance•Cast

 

U-Pick Orchards​

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We used to pick cherries over the hill 
where we paid to climb wooden ladders 
into the bright haven above our heads, the fruit 
dangling earthward. Dark, twinned bells 
ringing in some good fortune just beyond 
our sight. I have lived on earth long enough 
to know good luck arrives only on its way 
to someone else, for it must leave you to the miracle 
of your own misfortune, lest you grow weary 
of harvest, of cherries falling from the crown of sky 
in mid-summer, of hours of idle. Let there be 
a stone of suffering. Let the fruit taste of sweetness 
and dust. Let your heart split so precisely 
you must hold, somehow, a memory of cherries—
tart talismans of pleasure—in the rucksack 
of your soul. Taut skin, sharp blessing. 
Luminous, ordinary and acute.

 

 

Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 14, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets. Used with the poet's permission.

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Danusha Laméris is a poet and essayist raised in Northern California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize recipient, a winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry, and a 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award honoree. Her collections include The Moons of August (2014), chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize; Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020); and Blade by Blade (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She teaches in Pacific University's low-residency MFA program.and leads the  on line Litfield Writing Community. 

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