SCUPPERNONGS by Kathryn Stripling Byer

They ripened to myth on her tongue, sweetness

always beyond reach, out there at the edge

of abandoned farms, back in the thickets

where no decent woman dared go.  Not that she

scorned mayhaws her black neighbors left

at her door.  Toiling hours in tropical swelter,

she boiled them down into a red syrup

salvaged in jelly jars.  How much of her sweat

she stirred into that crimson stock I still

contemplate when it comes time to make jelly

again and I find myself roaming the fruit stalls

till  I smell them, lifting both hands full,

as she would have done, to my nose,

understanding why she bent to every plum,

melon, and peach, every strip of fresh sugar cane.

Thus have these scuppernongs ripened

for too long inside my refrigerator.

Past time to ward off the coming rot,

time to remember how she'd set to work

with no recourse to Sure-Gel, just lemon and

sugar.  A spoon.  Cheesecloth.  Most of a morning

or afternoon, watching the syrup drip slowly

then more slowly still down the spoon's sticky

edge.  Leaving everything it touched, as always,

a mess, and for what?  On my windowsill,

seven jars through which the light of this late

summer afternoon takes its time, quickening

each pot of pale amber juices to sweet everlasting.

Previously Published in Iron Mountain Review.
From COMING TO REST, Louisiana State University Press

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