The Gift

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 14, 2008 by Ethel Pochocki

The Gift

   on my birthday,
   my friend,
   a girl of sixty,
   shinnied up the dead maple
   to cut the crown of grapes
   that hung like a young girl's curls
   from leafless limbs
   in ironic grace

   their runaway vines
   had escaped their stakes,
   gone mad with freedom,
   spilling out and over
   eclipsing boulders and fern,
   blocking traffic on
   ancestral mousepaths,
   finally winding with woodbine
   up the maple and settling in

   carefully she clipped
   the clusters to fall directly
   into the colander I held
   just so to catch the drop
   until the rounded mound could
   hold
   no more rosy pleasure

   just enough
   to make one batch of jelly,
   four sturdy jars that once
   held Trappist jam,
   appropriately holy,
   now dwindled to one
   that sits on the sill,
   a ruby prism in the
   winter sun

   I taste the sweetness
   on crusty bread,
   fruit of the vine
   work of human hands,
   I do this in memory
   of my braveheart
   friend

Note to poets: Short lines preferred. Poetry is published in a newspaper column only 35 characters wide, counting punctuation and spaces. Submit poems to Poetry, NCR, P.O. Box 411009, Kansas City MO 64141-1009, or e-mail at poetry@ncronline.org

--Ethel Pochocki

Brooks, Maine