Venturing fingers among the tangle of blackberry thorn canes, questing their dark elusive prize, plucking each plump bundle, then easing it from the labyrinth of defending claws, I discover one gleaming berry ridden by a petite beetle, her flat, yellow shield an extravagant contrast against the obsidian fruit’s glistening bulb.
Michael Baldwin, is a native of Fort Worth, TX. A retired library administrator and professor of American Government, his poetry was featured on the national radio program The Romantic Hours, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He won the Violet Newton Single Poem Prize, 2000, the Eakin Award, 2011 for Scapes, and the Morris Chapbook Award, 2012, for Counting Backward From Infinity. His book of Texas poetry, Lone Star Heart (Lamar University Press, 2016), vied for the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Book Award. His third poetry book, The Quantum Uncertainty of Love (Shanti Arts Press, 2019) received a Readers Favorite 5-Star Award. Mr. Baldwin resides in Benbrook, TX.