The Canning Room

Lyrics

Another season to put away. Another summer to lock behind glass.

Down from the first floor, past the heat of the Kitchen.
I take the Back Hall, where the air is cool and still.
I don't look toward the Scullery, that endless crash and scour.
Down the steep stairs, my hand on the smooth, worn rail.
The Furnace Corridor breathes its dry metal breath to the left.
And I turn right, away from the stain of the Flood Room's threshold.
I will not think of rot today. I will not think of what the damp undoes.
Today is for what holds.

The air inside is a hot, wet towel. Vinegar and boiling fruit, steam clinging to the stone walls.
The single high window is blind with condensation.
Here is the long zinc-lined counter, scored with a hundred years of knives.
Here is the copper pot, big enough to drown a memory in.
The gas rings hiss a low blue prayer.
This is where the year stops running.

The world is boiled down here.
August becomes a thick, sweet paste. July, a clear amber jelly.
We lower the cage into the water. We listen for the furious bubble.
Each jar a small, glass body. Each label a name tag for a captured sunbeam.
Peaches, 1934. Tomatoes, 1952. Blackberries, from the year of the drought, small and hard as rosary beads.

The work is in the waiting. After the scalding, the sealing, the tightening.
The jars are set in rows on the wood shelves to cool.
And the room begins its sermon.
It's a sound that has a color. The sharp ping of the cherry conserve is the truest red.
The slower, deeper pop of the spiced apple butter has the exact hue of turning leaves. You don't hear it with your ears, you see it behind your eyes.

These shelves are an almanac written in syrup.
Each jar is a miniature of the room that contains it, a sealed memory of preservation.
In this one, the light from 1968 still falls across the table. In that one, the worry of a distant war is boiled into the pears.
I remember canning a batch that never existed, the ghost-peaches of a late frost. Their jar is here too, cold to the touch.
This room is the master jar, holding all the others. And we are all preserved inside it.

The last lid pulls down. A final, satisfying note.
Silence settles. The steam begins to clear.
The rows are a silent army, ready for the long siege of winter.
It is all put away now. It is safe.