Blackberry Tree

What a beautiful blackberry tree!
Slim and yielding.
Its branches through the window passing
The whole house perfuming

The sweet, soft berries
In my mouth tickled
Eating them was funny.
Thinking about my blackberry tree,
Brings back a tasty memory.

The Cicadas

The singing of the cicadas
started rather early,
while grandma passed the coffee
through the cloth strainer.
The sun warming the earth,
the cicadas expanded the hullabaloo
some sang together in the trees,
others on the leaves in the bushes.

All of them, however, forming a great choir,
called us to play in the immense yard.
Come on girls, before the rain falls!

The Starfruit Hedge

For us, an immense yard
where all day long we played
and great adventures lived.

In the yard an armadillo, jabuticabas, and guavas
A beautiful grapevine that grandpa had planted,
and the starfruit hedge!

There we kept our secrets,
love letters written to boys
who at nightfall spied on us in the yard
Childhood feelings, pure and naive
which I can not bring back.
How do I miss the starfruit hedge!

The Hazelnuts

The stairs that led us to the yard
was long and sinuous.
Its shape reminded us of a large snail.
Out of grandma´s spying eyes
we slid down on the handrails
having so much fun with the play.

Indeed the best thing of all was to crack the hazelnuts.
Each one within its gourd, to fill and serve at the table.
But when breaking up the hard shells, poor hazelnuts,
almost all of them rolled down the stairs…

That was the story we used to tell grandma.
And that´s how we stuffed ourselves with the delicious nuts.