Picking Strawberries in the Fog

Picking Strawberries in the Fog

Cole Hartin

We awoke in a cloud
and, after drinking our coffee,
mustered our children,
shepherding them into their car seats.
We punched a tunnel through the fog in
our minivan.

We left the fluorescent orbs behind with
the city, our path not much lightened
by the muted rays of sun.

Patches of dense fog lifted to unveil
leaden skies and beside us the
verdant green of full summer
well-watered.

We climbed the hill to the
strawberry field, all the while
overlooking the river and its rising banks.
They disappeared into the clouds so that
I could have believed they kept climbing,
kept rising into real mountains, instead of
these worn-down Appalachian hills.

I thought this looked like some imagined
ancestral homeland, like a place I wish
I was from.

We picked (and ate) our fill, each of us,
syrupy juice dripping from the corners of our mouths,
some running down my beard, running onto my jacket, onto
the collar of my jacket.

I paid the smiling lady with my
dirty money before we rode home
in near silence.

---

Cole Hartin
Writer & Priest

Cole is an Anglican priest serving in Saint John, New Brunswick with a PhD in theological studies from Wycliffe College. His non-academic writing has been published by The Living Church, Christianity Today, Front Porch Republic, and The Huffington Post.

Photography by Branimir Balogovic