Huckleberries

Barbarous allies, pimpled wind-gods, jug-band confidants — this is whom one offers huckleberry pie. Why? What stands to be gained? The taut wisdom of country refinement, an inimitable Volksangfroid, a measure of quiet. One matures over huckleberry pie, a specific and condensed maturation, as though two years of sex education were imparted in the single swap of a ping-pong paddle. One grows stern and wise as a pine knot, and the mistakes of the past become as the mistakes of a child. They do not reflect on the current state.

What tart animus accomplishes this pie? How does it transmute the same earthly essence that might otherwise have been an apple or an idiot savant into its own minute orb dusky as a crystal ball? Are the sugar grains on the crust really our future failures crystallized in this eating or are they only sugar? Riboflavin, and what it might mean to be loved for what we are... pie releases the huckleberry’s mysteries but one can only ingest, not explain, them. We can but case it in pastry and nibble at its violet secret.

In one hell I have heard of, the huckleberries never ripen and the children know all the curse words.