Blackberry picking by Seamus Heaney

In Black Berry picking by Seamus Heaney we see the speaker reminisce about the childhood memories he has about picking will black berries. we see him recalling the beauty and the joy of picking them and delighting on the sweet flesh. We then see the speaker turn from unbridled joy to sadness as the berries are devoured by mold, and his acceptance of this, thier sad fate. Below the surface the speaker is actually commenting on the fact that in life it take time to reach our prime, and once we are there, we love it and experience a nirvana never before experienced, and it seems like it will never and, then just when you least expect it, you have began to age and your body decay, and although you wich it to never happen, you realize that its part of life and accept it. He does, namely, this through the uses of structure, imagery, and symbolism.
Heaney uses structure to show the transitions of life with the breaks in stanzas. The first stanza, or more like paragraph, is long and very descriptive, mostly emphasizing the prime of ones life, as it is full of beautiful imagery and its lasts a very long time without changing topics, it stays on how wonderful it is that the blackberries are ripe (blackberries act as a symbol for ones life). This is then contrasted with the second stanza, which is significabtly shorter, which talks about the decaying of the berries, and thus our life. The shortness and the topic of the second stanza signifies how in life, when we reach our end, it comes abruptly, and while we know that it is coming it alsways come too soon and is over too quickly.
Imagery is also used to show the progress of ones in and out of ones prime. When we first are in our lives we have obviously not hit our prime, we are still maturing, still ripening, just like the "bunches of red and green ones that were hard as knots". Then when we begin to matuer, we ripen likle the berries, and just as the berries become sweet like summers blood, we find the beauty in ourselves and have the time of our lives. then as we die and age, we begin to decay like the berries, and realize that nothing is forever, and the good times do eventually end.
Imagery is probably the most widely used literary technique in this peom. It is the basis for all of my interpretation as they provide the evidence for the interpretation that the poem is about the passage of time through one life and ones prime. THis largest use of symbolism is the use of barries as a symbol for ones life, and the transformation fot eh berries symbolizes the transformation of someones life through stages in and out of ones prime over a period of time.
Blakc berry picking is one of my personal favorites of Heaney. His use of structure, imagery, and symbolism create a passage of time through ones life in and out of ones prime, and also add to my personal thoughts on this poem.