Canning (1955)

It was the only loving that she knew,
compulsive summer canning when the bloom
of ragweed drove her crazy: peaches first,
tomatoes, beans and corn, and sometimes plums
…or cherries that I picked. Fruit jars lined
the back wall of our cellar, giving glints
of promise and redemption. Quite a sight!
A piece of this world’s plunder she had cooked
and sealed and set aside, which gives a clue
to views of life hereafter and the glue
that kept her world together and apart.

There was so little pleasure! It was hard,
this peeling, blanching, packing. She would stand
and count the lined up jars. Sometimes she’d sigh
as she topped off the syrup, screwed down tight
the rings that held lids fast; too often night
before lids cooled to pop or pinged to taps.

The cellar was her showplace. She took pride
in dusting all the jars that there were hidden,
took comfort in the count and still was driven,
as if by lust, to push the numbers up.
She knew jars could explode, that some would fall
as if a hand had pushed them or simply dropped.
She knew quite well the cellar floor was packed
and jars would break. Still glass remained her choice,
since glass displayed her work to best advantage,
turned work into a thing of beauty, food to art
that promised for the future something good.

And once she left off canning, what had stood
to make her days important came undone.
Her hands were used to work
and now were left with nothing left to do,
and still her mind imposed a kind of order.
Strict control was what she turned to
to control her doubt. Hallucination ruled her,
still of shelves, but this time stacked with linens:
blankets, towels, and sheets and pillowcases.
From her bed, she pointed, gave directions, ordered change.

The nothing she could see, we rearranged,
just as we might have fruit—the towels with towels
and sheets with sheets. We stacked each unseen group
according to its color and its kind. Her life was one of coping.
Cope she did
until the day she died.
The jar of her remains we set aside.