The Bounty

The Bounty
The garden overloads itself in late summer
The zucchini that became the number
One thing people dodge at the county fair
Everybody’s got them, nobody’s aware
Of what to do with thirty in a week
The tomatoes splitting on the vine, the peak
Of everything at once, the bounty lands
All together, more than I have hands
The bounty, overloaded on the vine
The bounty, all at once at the finish line
The harvest window tight and short and full
The bounty, the beautiful and brutal
The preservation kicks in, the canning starts
The freezing and the pickling and the arts
Of making the abundance last the year
The bounty pressed into the future here
The mason jars lined up in rows of red
The tomatoes put away, the dread
Of the winter’s bare store held at bay
The bounty becoming the February day
Nothing wasted if I work it right
Nothing going bad if I put the night
Into the processing, the kitchen running hot
With the canning season’s everything-I-got
My grandmother canned three hundred jars
She fed a family through the empty bars
Of February off the summer’s store
The bounty she preserved, a hundred more
The bounty, overloaded on the vine
The bounty, all at once at the finish line
The harvest window tight and short and full
The bounty, the beautiful and brutal