I've chosen this particular poem today as we happen to have a great vine of nightshade growing along the back fence. I mentioned it in an earlier post, and showed you a picture of its green glossy fruit, but today I found the berries all changing over to their autumn colors. Quite early it would seem!
The boys were oohing and ahhing over the "juicy" looking berries, so I thought it a good time to listen to the words of Cicely Mary Barker's Nightshade Berry Fairy, and heed the warning within:
“You see my berries, how they gleam and glow,
Clear ruby-red, and green, and orange-yellow;
Do they not tempt you, fairies, dangling so?”
The fairies shake their heads and answer “No!
You are a crafty fellow!”
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“What won’t you try them? There is naught to pay!
Why should you think my berries poisoned things?
You fairies may look scared and fly away –
The children will believe me when I say
My fruit is fruit for kings!”
But all good fairies cry in anxious haste,
“O children, do not taste!”
(Note from the author: You must believe the good fairies, though the berries look nice. This is the Woody Nightshade, which has purple and yellow flowers in the summer.)
In case you're curious about what the nightshade flowers look like, here's a picture from June:
You can find lots more nature poems in the Cicely Mary Barker series, but in the meantime, stop by Mentor Texts for the Poetry Friday Round Up, and, remember ...
Tread gently now, there may be a Flower Fairy underfoot ...
