Zinc Lid

Unknown

Zinc Lid

It’s the gray of canning season rain,

neither cool nor warm, and mottled

with feeble light. There’s a moony

milk-glass insert ringed by rubber

and a dent where somebody rapped it

to break the seal. But its cucumber

summers, dill and brine, are over.

No more green Mason jars cooling,

no generations of dust beneath

the cellar stairs, the ancient quarts

of tomatoes like balls of wax,

the pickles slowly going gray

as kidneys, pale applesauce settling

out of its syrup. Today, on a bench

in a dark garage it’s upside down,

a miniature galvanized tub adrift

on time, and in it two survivors,

a bolt that once held everything

together, season in and season out,

and a wing nut resting its wings.

Ted Kooser 

 

 

"...Two survivors."

 

The contrast between the purpose - that of storing abundance for future food, and the grayness, the reduced and dusty "survivors" of that hopeful outlook, grips me with its grimness. 

 

This has been a theme in my life, that of standing in the ruins of a once-established dream - a house or a garden or a person - and being asked to work with the things that remain.

 

 

And the things that remain?

 

 

In Kooser's poem, I see hope.

Two survivors.

Not much, but having lived and re-lived this particular, I understand that this is all that's needed.

 

 

"Season in and season out..." 

There is something (or someOne) who holds everything together.

And because of Him the future is stored with abundance and fullness and life.  

 

 

I rest in the shadow of His wings. 

                                  

Barn Swallows

Carl Brenders, "Migration Fever"

Barn Swallows

Here are all of the days in August
marked off in sharp strokes
on the power wire out to the barn.
Each year at this time they line up
for roll call, parents and young,
leaving their mud cups empty
under the eaves, on beams and rafters,
on the lintels of doors. In dark blue
iridescent ink they write
their thank-you note: Where once
we were few we now are many!
And the next day they're gone,
wiped from the sky by a rag of cloud
just as the first leaf falls.

Ted Kooser

It's that time of year again. I like Autumn, but I don't want Summer to end. Change, departure, goodbyes? Please, not just yet.

Applesauce

Mary Whyte, "Sister Heyward"

Applesauce

I liked how the starry blue lid

of that saucepan lifted and puffed,

then settled back on a thin

hotpad of steam, and the way

her kitchen filled with the warm

wet breath of apples, as if all

the apples were talking at once,

as if they'd come cold and sour

from chores in the orchard,

and were trying to shoulder in

close to the fire. She was too busy

to put in her two cent's worth

talking to apples. Squeezing

her dentures with wrinkly lips,

she had to jingle and stack

the bright brass coins of the lids

and thoughtfully count out

the red rubber rings, then hold

each jar, to see if it was clean,

to a window that looked out

through her back yard into Iowa.

And with every third or fourth jar

she wiped steam from her glasses,

using the hem of her apron,

printed with tiny red sailboats

that dipped along with leaf-green

banners snapping, under puffs

of pale applesauce clouds

scented with cinnamon and cloves,

the only boats under sail

for at least two thousand miles.

Ted Kooser

Cooking is a kind of poetry. And if you have the right ingredients in the poem - a grandmother, apples, (the scent of cooking apples and spices!), the sense of place and home with a hint of exotic travels, the practiced movements of one who works for love (motions that become almost holy by their intent), it's a dance, a rhythm, almost an elemental force. More than a poem by far.