by Katherine January
a basin of plums, water, sugar, pectin
(a few more or less shouldn’t matter)
cooking is forgiving that way
except for cakes, and I never make cakes
measure, cook, pour,
wiping the rims like my mother did,
placing the boiled lids on the jars
and finishing in a hot water bath.
With proper tongs I lift the jars
from the canner to cool
on a fresh, white towel—
the color irresistible,
red-purple chunks
humming like jewels
caught in the light
next morning I tap the lids—
each one thunks the just right tune
of late summer pleasure
and then, I open one
to have a smear with toast and tea
It is not jam.
the taste is tart, plummy,
I want more, but jam
is thick, it never pours like this.
I could retrace my steps
boil again in smaller batches
buy new lids, ask a chemist
but the moment
of catching summer in a jar is gone
maybe it’s enough I got this far,
filling 28 jars with sweet plum suns
and maybe
next year
on the hottest day of August
I’ll remember to boil small batches
‘til it drips from the spoon in thickening sheets,
the failed jam of the past
a perfect crimson memory
poured over pudding
and ice cream
photo credit: Xuancong Meng, Unsplash
Katherine January writes and farms in Bountiful, Utah. Her work has appeared in Sine Cera, Desert Wanderings, Shenandoah Valley Writers’ Guild Showcase, The Potomac Guardian, Cosmic Daffodil, Farmer-ish Press, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and Green Ink Poetry. She was awarded an honorable mention for the Byron Herbert Reece Award sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society. Katherine’s first volume of poetry, The Blue Giraffe, was published in 2010. In 2024 she published Dream of Passing Fire, a co-authored collection of poems about walking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain.