Pickled Beets

Mildew blights are coming on.
We’ve had enough zucchini to last,
well, to last for months.
Withering tomato vines,
their curled brown leaves
and the sun goes wild gold fall
setting off at an odd angle
and down too early anyway.

I gather up the drying beets
from a crumbly sand soil,
scrub and roast them,
slice them with carrots
with too many rootlets,
odd remnants of a garden
which performed well
enough under sunflowers,
June’s hope turned
in on itself.

In that canning jar, leavings, lefts.
A scaley onion. Apple cider vinegar.
A little salt, a little sugar.
We’re back to roots,
to digging in
after heady grapes
and strawberry lush.
Blood-stain on my fingers.

Pickled Beets

Back to roots,
the underground.
What we bury
to remember old hearts.