The Last Jar--Before Cal Gets Home--and then, After

The Last Jar—Before Cal Gets Home—and then, After

the last jar of 1935

            carrots, put up last fall, sliced

            for a quick soup, are open on the long

            drain-board.  Their snap, the psssstPop!

            the sticking suck and the quick let go

                        (after she’d tapped the lid

                        to see it was fast)

            was the only noise the kitchen

            clock pulled into its tick.  She hummed

            but she was beside herself and clocks,

            and letting go of the last

            of something—well…

                        garlic and onion are obvious

                        and the hen,

                        she’s laid up quiet in the sink

                        or see—time’s good for tricks—

                        the carrot lid is marked

                        and she’s just pulled the onions

                        and they’re fresh as any weeping

                        she’ll ever do on the spot (but Cal’s

                        not home from the lake yet, so hold that)

                        except that morning, the limp wing

                        of her favorite old girl

                        it hurts me it hurts me

                        too big for the coon to lug off

                        but not to maim

                        and like this she picks her

                        up, and warm under her arm

                        there’s a heartbeat, a few hairy

                        caterpillars on the block—and no struggle

                                    it’s the mercy

                                    of the whole thing—once she knows…

                                    she just stops and lolls

                                    against the block…

                        a stray feather’s on her house-dress

                        the warm water’s getting warmer

                        the warm hen’s getting cooler

and the last jar of carrots

                        sliced for a quick soup, float now

                        in last summer’s brine,

                        globes, little orange globes,

                        in the musty, almost too musty water—

                                    it’s one thirty.  The hen’s white (purple

                                    bruise near the neck) skin is the same

                                    color as her hands.  Soon, in the boil-

                                    put in whole, her little globs of fat

                                    will waltz with a small turnip tip,

                                    a film of onion skin.  And salt.  Her one

                                    bird.  Her carrots.  And later,

throughout it all: her careful

                                    careful

                                    spoon to her husband’s lips

                                    But not yet.  Not yet.