Preserving Tradition by Kim Klugh (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) Thrust like little green canoes into a spring-fed lake, into the wide open mouths of sterile Mason jars you slide the long, crisp, home-grown cucumber spears Tucked in among frilly sprigs of dill and floating flecks of dried red pepper you pack wedges of Vidalia onion, garlic cloves and wild grape leaves plucked from the sun-soaked hedge— from the ladle you pour a vinegary-laced fluid submerging the stacked green spears flavors fuse on the stove top during a steaming bath in Gran’s big old hissing agate canner Months later, when November’s bite bears down upon us and we gather as family around the nicked up wooden table to feast and to give thanks for another year filled with both bounty and sorrow, we’ll remove a well cured quart or two from the batches lined up in the pantry, break the seals and inhale the essence of this long ago August afternoon when barefoot in our steamy kitchen you stood, intent on stuffing summer’s backyard garden bounty into gaping mouths of glass quart canning jars. Vespers by Kim Klugh (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) Like a golden grace note that darts about the garden altar, the yellow finch lights on the lip of the blue-glazed birdbath, dips its beak and swallows. While a tawny sparrow sentry side steps down the shed roof shingles, watching and waiting with wings tucked to quench its tiny thirst, the mourning dove bobs along in rivers of ivy ground cover until she flutters upward from the shadows for her turn to sip— then with feet clipped like miniature clothespins to the ledge of the blue-glazed birdbath— the tips of her orange toes she soaks. Lifting off, she settles among the trees, preens her scapular feathers then folds her wings— ready to roost. With gray breast puffed to pillow her head her doleful tones sift downward through layered piney boughs like soft evening prayers gracing the twilight garden.
by Kim Klugh (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) After my father had been placed in the soft sod— sod warmed by early October’s golden days— it must have been our month of tears that coaxed his orphaned primroses to bloom and dance around the base of the bone white birdbath come that year’s stone cold November
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