It comes down to this: what we do
with what we’ve got:
the sky, the sea beyond,
enough space, and tundra
just now berrying in this falling off
of the year.
The women hunch low to the ground,
plinking their buckets
with orange salmon berries.
Their bright floral parkas enliven
the gray morning.
They work quickly without
lifting their heads.
A day’s worth of picking will yield
only half a bucket of the tiny berries
which they will hoard
into jam and dole out
through the long winter
that crouches low over the next hill.
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