Armed with our white plastic buckets 
we set off in the safety of the noonday 
heat to snag the full rubus blackberries 
at the bend of her family's gravel road.
But before we even reached the end 
of the driveway, a goose hung strangled 
in the fence wire, bloodless and limp. Her 
long neck twisted, her hard beak open.
She was dead. Though we had been loosed 
like loyal ranch dogs, we knew we should 
go back, tell someone, offer help. Still, 
sunburned and stubborn in the way only 
long free days can make a body, we walked 
to the thicket and picked. When we returned, 
bloodied by prickles and spattered with stains, 
we were scolded, not for secreting 
the news of the dead goose, but for picking 
too many berries. For picking all day 
in the sun without worry for our own scratched 
skin. I can still remember how satisfying 
it was. How we picked in near silence, two 
girls who were never silent. How we knew 
to plunder so well, to take and take 
with this new muscle, this new gristle
that grew over us for good.