Jam
For Bev McQuinn
A decade gone, responding to my plea for thinning,
you dug canes with vigor,
creating welcomed roominess in my raspberry forest
and seeding a small grove of your own.
Every summer since then, you have blessed me with jam.
Including this one,
after which, very shortly,
you went:
your gut filled with an unwelcomed meal of cells.
We brought you food (without small seeds, please).
But, too suddenly, you were away.
The day I learned of it,
I found, in the refrigerator at work,
this year’s ruby gift of your labor.
This is the task you left to us:
eating the small-seeded sweetness
from the jar of your absence.
–E.A. Lechleitner
August 31, 2016