"6" by Gary Snyder

"Fresh Blackberries" by Jodi McKinney

“In that year, 1914, we lived on the farm

And the relatives lived with us.

A banner year for wild blackberries

Dad was crazy about wild blackberries

No berries like that now.

You know Kitsap County was logged before

The turn of the century—it was easiest of all,

Close to water, virgin timber,

When I was a kid walking about in the

Stumpland, wherever you’d go a skidroad

Puncheon, all overgrown.

We went up one like that, fighting our way through

To its end near the top of a hill:

For some reason wild blackberries

Grew best there. We took off one morning

Right after milking: rode the horses

To a valley we’d been to once before

Hunting berries, and hitched the horses.

About a quarter mile up the old road

We found the full ripe of berrytime—

And with only two pails—so we

Went back home, got Mother and Ruth,

And filled lots of pails. Mother sent letters

To all the relatives in Seattle:

Effie, Aunt Lucy, Bill Moore,

Forrest, Edna, six or eight, they all came

Out to the farm, and we didn’t take pails

Then: we took copper clothes-boilers,

Wash-tubs, buckets, and all went picking.

We were canning for three days.”

"6" by Gary Snyder from Myths and Texts. © New Directions, 1978.