This poem shows the blackberries across an entire lifecycle. This cycle is, on one level, a metaphor for the speaker’s childhood, from its inception to its final decay. At the opening of the poem, the berries were “red, green, hard as a knot” (Line 4), with only one hopeful fruit among them. The speaker describes tasting this first berry, inciting his appetite for life. Slowly the others “inked up” (Line 8), and life became his for the taking. Here there is rich, sensual language like “thickened wine” (Line 6), “stains upon the tongue” (Line 7), and “lust for / Picking” (Lines 7-8); this further positions the berries as a metaphor for youth, sensuality, sexuality, and desire. This is nature at its most vital, and it becomes a symbol for the stage of life that is at its most vital, too.

After the poem’s major turning point, the speaker recounts hoarding the berries in the barn until they begin to decay. This moment teaches that vitality, whether in nature or in humanity, is fleeting. The speaker attempted to go against natural order by trying to hold onto something that is ephemeral. This suggests the natural human inclination to try to hold onto fading youth, attempting to hold time itself in place.