Pickling Poem by Caroline Misner

With dill pilfered from my neighbour’s garden
I take out pots, jars ringed with scarlet wax
like the vestige of a kiss.
The basil has succumbed to an early frost: curled,
blackened like burnt paper;
but the tomatoes are good, though
green, the beets bleed, the wax
beans and cucumbers are ready for the brine.

The leaves are gilded; they flex
in a tired wind pocked with patches
of warmth and the redness of something
burning.

Now is the month of storage,
an otherwise filmy expression of death,
of caves, of hiding underground and hoarding
our old contraptions, now
obsolete.

The scent of brine fills the circumference
of my kitchen. I hope it’s not too late.
I slice off bruises like I peel the skin from my heart,
small hands that whisper with each involvement
of the paring knife.

I stir the progeny Old
Mother Earth has birthed in the summer.
It is a door. It is done. Soon
the birds will curse their wings when they sluice
the vault of the sky, streaming toward an apricot sun
when these emerald jars will ripen.

Someday, there will be a feast.