The Long Winter

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In my Grandmother’s house you’ll find pie tins twenty years old. Warped frying pans
and pots with bottoms worn thin from copper sponges and metal mixing spoons.

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Taught by her mother to save for winter— bulk up when food is good and plentiful.

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Can string beans, peaches, and potatoes for the droughts, famine, plagues of locusts,
and sandstorms, that will wipe out the hospitals, and ivy-covered universities.

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Preserve love, comfort, fear, and a little despair in jars of marmalade, rhubarb jam, beef
tongue, pickled boiled eggs, and roasted red peppers.

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Dry cure sardines, halibut, and pork belly for the impending government shutdown,
market crash, foreign missiles that will blanket our homes in ash, our crops in radioactive
spores, and skin in blisters.

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Stew desperation in large pots of Gumbo, roasted chicken noodle, and boiled hog maws;
all served to her children

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my children

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their children

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to keep us warm

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to see us through the long winter.

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