Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Blackberrying
By Mrs. MABEL C. SATTERTHWAITE, Columbiana Co, O.

The one thing I like best to do these days,
These August days of mellowing ripening heat,
Right after breakfast (let the dishes wait)
Is this: To pack a lunch—some sandwiches,
Some cookies or some cake, a cup to drink
Cool water from the spring—and then set out
Across the farm, the children going too,
To briery pasture lands where berry vines
Have spread and rambled over everything,
And there to spend the day. Tho sun be hot
There’s no and then a little fleecy cloud
Brings momentary shade; a little breeze,
Like a lost lamb, comes wandering by itself;
A lone cicada in a tree-top shrills,
Like heat grown audible, the whole day long.

I wander here and there, my avid hands
Not ceasing from their theft of shining fruit.
Sometimes I press thru birery wilderness
Of small hard berries, sure to come at last
To some rich promised land where berries hand
In luscious glistening clusters. Childish zeal
Soon flags, and berry-picking lapses. Soon
The nests of birds, the flowers and pretty leaves
Claim more attention than the little pails.

But even if the children are not good
At picking, eating all the fruit they pick,
I know that nature holds them in her arms
And breathes a spell upon them that the years
Can never take away. Sometimes I hear
The voices near at hand: “What if we found
Where berries grew as large as hens’ eggs are?”
“And if they sold a dollar each?” “And if
There were no thorns?” And if—and if—and if—
Ah, do I not remember thoughts like these
Long years ago before time clipped my wings?

And yet I think they’re not so sadly clipped.
For while my hands still fill the yawning pails,
My thoughts roam freely up and down the world;
And somehow here among the briers and trees,
With sun and sky above and grass beneath,
And birds and insect creatures all about,
And children’s voices sounding now and then,
The sordid things I know seem far away,
And greed and lust and hate are like a dream;
The whole world seems a paradise of peace.

What if in afternoon I came back home
Thorn scratched and tired and if the kitchen sink
And table hold the whole day’s dishes heaped
And waiting to be washed? What if there still
Remain the berries to be cooked and canned?
And what if midst of this our city friends
Should drive in unexpected? Still I say
The whole world seems a paradise of peace.

Sept 13 – 1929

Over the rim of the earth – to the North – lies the land of the Unknown – it is windy, the ground is frozen hard – barren – there is no snow – white wind clouds scud over a vast gray sky – a crow or two

Sept. 17 – 1929—

By train to Springville, thence walked to N. Boston thence hitch hike to Hamburg – thence by Street car home—
I can think of no day for years that has been as perfect for me as was today; when I was