The water boils as I skin tomato,

after tomato, after tomato, after…

Some from the garden, some from the market

All of last year’s harvest long since canned and sealed away.

Only one jar remains, yet to be eaten.

This year’s canning has begun, the tomatoes,

gathered, many fallen in the fields,

fallen by blight before their time,

bleed into the jars,

their peeled skins tossed into the compost bag,

to be carried out, to help nurture future garden plots.

The fallen giving new life to future family needs.

 

The new jars sterile and clean, wait for the bodies.

They start empty, then line up with the collected remains,

a little Arlington on my kitchen counter.

Each ripe tomato having given its youth in the full service of …

The summer

 

Summers ending is not yet, but yet the fall begins.

When I was little, we would play, while,

Grandma, my mother and aunt would work,

in my grandmother’s A plus, all purpose basement.

Busy times, with food cooking upstairs in the kitchen,

and busy canning in the basement.

They worked together side by side,

filling canning jars together in a communal effort.

Did it bind us together? Did it do more than nurture our bodies?

Did that communal time of family conversation, bind us together as souls.

Souls gathered together at the edge of Fall, waiting for..

Waiting for the death that comes with winter?

Waiting together for the new birth that comes with Spring?

 

Its canning time, but where are my siblings and cousins?

Its canning time, but where is the community?

That community that used to work to sow, and harvest and prepare.

Prepare for the cold hard days that winter would and will bring.

If little boy blue were to blow his horn?

Would all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

Rush back together to bring them all home?

Has fall and winter changed so much, or,

is it that today, that fruit from distant corners of the world,

has replaced those family ties,

replaced it with their genetically engineered sweetness, and..

and the illusion that the seasons do not matter.

That winter can be staved off, and that winter..

Winter is just a dusting of snow.

 

So blow your horn little boy blue.

And if they come.

If they come.

I will serve them gazpacho, while we peel, and can,

Bathe, peel, salt, and can.

and wait,

and wait,

for that soft sound that tells us an eternal bond has been sealed.

 

© Dan DeMarle 2014 – © photo taken by Dan DeMarle 2016