Potential: Unlimited

When my son told me that he had written a poem about a blackberry, I assumed that he was another member of the lost generation of kids taught to worship Blackberries and all the technology it represents.  "Great, he is in love with a phone.  Sure, it's more of a Personal Digital Assistant than just a phone, but still..."  Imagine my relief when I found that he was in love with the blackberry fruit, not the Blackberry phone.

Thankfully, my assumption about the full poem and its meaning was still wrong.  Here is his work in its entirety, unabridged, composed as part of an English assignment on metaphors.  I thought it was pretty darn good, better than some dumb love sonnet to a cell phone any day of the week:

LOVE

Love is a blackberry,

Good and bad

Sweet when picked at the right time,

Sour when picked too early

I wish that they all could be sweet,

But there is always a sour berry in the bunch

To pick the right one,

You need more than a hunch

To find the one for you

You have to learn not to judge,

Not by color,

By shape,

By size

It only matters what is on the inside

We all hope that we can pick the sweet,

Not fully knowing until we bite in

We all grow up together,

On the same vine,

We grow until we are ready,

And then break off

We often judge by color,

But are often never right

We might pick the pretty one that turns out to be sour,

Or the ugly that turns out to be sweet

We are always changing as we grow,

We try to pick right,

But until it is done,

 We never know

-Thomas Sherrier

Man, the kid's got skills.