Please join Synkroniciti in welcoming back Californian poet Annette Boushey Holland. “Picking Blackberries” won our “Family” poetry contest. In this delightfully unusual love poem, Annette reminds us that all beings (not only humans) are attracted by sweetness, nurture and pleasure, here symbolized by the blackberry. “Always chancing fate when we pick berries/ wandering on down the lane that leads/ into the forest.” This desire for sweetness is risky–there are bears, literal and metaphorical–but it also builds ecosystems and relationships, including her own: “and when I turned and offered/ you a handful, you put on your/ brakes and stayed for/ the rest of our lives.” “Sequoia Park” celebrates a different kind of enduring love, the love between siblings. Walking with her sister among the giant trees, she ponders time and mutability. “Holding hands as we did/ back when you helped me/ learn to walk. Now/ I’m the one who helps you/ not to fall down.” The gentle, unobtrusive rhythm and fricative music of Annette’s verse is elegant and intelligent. She extends the sense of family to include plants and animals and integrates human relationships into the fabric of the woods.
Read Annette’s enchanting poetry in our “Family” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Though she delights in picking berries — especially with daughters and grandsons — and in making berry pies and jam, Annette Boushey Holland is less enthused about dealing with the encroaching vines that threaten to take over their pasture and trails. She lives with her husband, two horses and a dog on a scrap of second and third-growth redwood forest in Northern California. When not battling invasive plants, Annette enjoys writing, painting, hiking, puttering in the garden, and hosting meditation retreats in a remodeled barn. She has done fundraising and public relations for several conservation groups, taught English composition, and helped establish two land trusts. Her publications include articles on environmental issues, short memoirs, and poems.