It never hurts to have some staples set aside.
That’s what Grandma used to say, tucking jars
of home-canned plums. apples, pickles and soups,
beets, tomatoes, white beans and green
on wooden shelves that lined her cellar wall.
Sometimes I’d stand in its doorway marveling at the colors,
remembering the fragrances that wafted through the house
when grandma canned. I thought of them today
when I saw the ripened cherries and recalled
how they hung encased in ice last winter,
and how the early-returning robins
feasted on them in the March snow.
Mother Nature, it seems. has her pantry, too.
Maybe she knew my grandma.