Poem 2 - Bitter

We drove all day in the baking sun and all night through deep chocolate dark in my cinnamon-rusted Fairlaine through air that smelled like butter and gooseberries.  The trunk was full of gooseberries we'd picked at your mother's house and didn't know what to do with.  But when she'd asked us to take some before everything rotted out there, we couldn't say no.  We ventured out into the abandoned field, where you never played when you were a kid.  Her grating voice carried down to us, "Pick more!"  She gave us old Cool Whip containers to put them in.  Lots of them.  "How much Cool Whip can the woman eat?" I said, but you didn't laugh.  We picked until our fingers tingled, then drank another beer with her on the porch, then whisked ourselves away from there like we were being chased.  You didn't say much.  So I turned the radio up and rolled the windows down.  And wondered why you'd wanted me to see where you came from.