Old Love

He came bearing jam from a dead woman's hand,
found at the bottom of a freezer he was cleaning out
and when he handed it to me,
like a ruby artifact dug up from the bowels of Pompeii,
I could only think of her bones in the cemetery these two long years,
rain and snow and sun falling on silent gravestone,
and yet still she will serve us jam
and still we will thank her and lick our lips,
tasting the sweetness of love.



But it took weeks before we finally broke the jar's seal,
(who could bear to? lid with her handwriting that made me hurt),
before we popped that lid open that she had screwed tight three summers ago,
and I stared a long time before I dipped knife in,
before I took my toast to the porch,
to watch the sun rise over our patch of strawberries,
all dangled in dew, and there I ate her jam spread thin,
and think of her with cancer, still arched in morning light, picking,
her thick Dutch hands stained red with the afternoon hulling,
her wiping counters spotlessly clean, always, in evening,
line of jeweled jars dazzling in fading light... fading light.

I eat berries ripened by a long ago sun,
picked and plucked and mashed by a hand
long ago ripened and picked,

and yes, I choke out thanks,
And yes, I taste sweet love,
And yes, the jar sits still in the fridge,

No one daring to spread the last of her out.





Photos: of my mother-in-law’s jam found still at the bottom of her freezer, Dutch Opa giving it to us with a scratched explanation on a sticky note : “From Grandma yet”…. Yet.
Her flight exit was two years ago this month….