Overall meaning of this poem?

Blackberry-picking








Late August, given heavy rain and sun


For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.


At first, just one, a glossy purple clot


Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.


You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet


Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it


Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for


Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger


Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots


Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.


Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills


We trekked and picked until the cans were full,


Until the tinkling bottom had been covered


With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned


Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered


With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.





We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.


But when the bath was filled we found a fur,


A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.


The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush


The fruit fermented, the sweet

Overall meaning of this poem?
The berries caused a craving so bad that the person became obsessed with getting more...and more...and more until the person had so much that the fruit could not be prepared in a timely fashion and it went bad.





Like collecting too much of anything...too much unattended can go bad.



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