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It’s late summer, loaded with what we
haven’t yet found a place for, what we
haven’t yet used—two sacksful of tomatoes,
branches of basil, a bag of mint
unzipped and tipped with white stars. Potatoes
purple and yellow. Fat garlic streaked mauve
and white. Zucchini fattened past the picking
point, flat squash scalloped, ringed green at stem end.
Bags of clipped greens: beet, rocket, chard, spinach,
sorrel, mustard, each stem rigid, tinged
with the ink of its root. Lolla rossa
and merveille de quatre saisons. The last
six peaches, too few for a bottle.
The loll of small onions in wine-colored
paper. Ears of corn still dressed in their floss,
and flats of berries, too many for
the refrigerator. Before the sacks

break, juices spill, tubers bud blind, red
berries gray and blueberries whiten. Before
the leaves faint on their stems and lie down, never
to revive. Before, inexplicably,
squash lighten and cloves diminish inside
their paper partitions. Before the lettuces
translate themselves into prosaic
Anglo-Saxon, the mint begins to smell
like the cat, herbs to cling to their plastic
housing, we must decide: what to cook
and what to eat today. What will last
the day, two days, the week. What we will
and what we won’t eat. What in bottles,
jars, bags. What will keep and what to give away.

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