Wealth

It's Guest Post Poet day! Charla Kramer, Chief Farmbrarian at Echo Bend farm, has graciously offered up some inspiration today. You can follow her on Facebook or Twitter (@Echobend). If you are ever in Northern Michigan you can find her farm stand just off scenic M-22, where she provides fresh vegetables, jams, and delicious homemade bread.

Wealth

Oppressive heat and glaring sun of August

Would send me creeping

Into cool, dusky depths of the basement.

Grabbing hold of the colorless thin curtain

Pulling it back, crick crick, in its ball bearing track,

To reveal cool, shining jars

Full of garden jewels.

Rubies and garnets of tomatoes,

Deep jade greens of Shellie beans,

Amethyst blueberries,

Carnelian and opalescent jams.

A wall of beautiful jars

Stretching the height and length of an entire wall,

Representing the richness that my mother created for our

family through hours in the garden and over the hot, boiling

canning pot.

I would drag my child's finger,

Thunk, thunk,

Along the rows of chilled jars,

Visions of my own stocked pantry

Of goods and memories, preserved,

In the cool heart of my own home

Just beginning to take root.

In a single jar, there, in childhood,

It began.