Lesley Younge
Image by Lainey Leon from Pexels
Lesley Younge is an educator and writer based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Currently, she teaches middle school English, and is in her 18th year in the classroom. She debuted as an author in March 2023 with two books for young people. Nearer My Freedom is a middle school found verse novel that uses Olaudah Equiano’s acclaimed autobiography as source text. A-Train Allen, her first picture book, was the Grand Prize Winner of the Sleeping Bear Press Own Voices, Own Stories award. A fellow of the Hurston/Wright Foundation and Anaphora Literary Arts, her short fiction and poetry have appeared in recent issues of Full Bleed, Midnight & Indigo, and The Plentitudes. She blogs regularly at teacherlesley.com and keeps in touch on Instagram @teacher.lesley.
Blackberries
The way to Boyle's swimming hole
is less memory than dreamwalk.
Sunlight strains through the redwoods to reach
feathery ferns on the forest floor.
I carry you on my back, an echo of the old world
and the old ways, this kind of foraging
an ancient task the body cannot forget.
We tramp over fallen needles and mossy roots
until the trail opens up, revealing riverbank.
The spongy pillars we called cattails are gone,
but the reeds climb as high as our heads.
I break one and blow, trying to coax a song.
The bramble is thick and thorns prick on both sides.
Ripe fruit is scarce but I reach into the briars
risking skin and limb because blackberries
are your favorite and I have bled for you before.
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