Eighteen years ago I moved from a little town where I won the county blue ribbon for blackberry preserves and bread & butter pickles. I carried this poem down to another little town where I won first place in their Annual Creative Writers Contest in the poetry division. Since I have just returned to that little town where I won those blue ribbons, I thought it was appropriate to pull it out, dust it off, and say, “Welcome Home.”
My aunt was so proud of my pickles and preserves that she entered them into the state fair. My big head was brought down to size when we discovered the difference between county and state fairs. At the county fair, the judges didn’t taste the preserves. Mine were just the prettiest. At the state fair, they tasted. Mine didn’t win. This goes to show beauty only counts in county fairs and beauty pagents! It’s what’s inside that counts!
Blackberry Hand-me Downs
By Maryleigh at Blue Cotton Memory
“Hand me down some summertime, Darlin’,”
asks breakfast table relations,
“Some of that blackberry summer time.”
“Blackberry jams all gone,” comes the answer
“All Gone till summer time.
When berry time comes, I’ll preserve
you
some summer time.”
drops of lemon and sugar pounds,
bitter-sweetened blackberries
picked in the chilled sweat
of morning’s summer sun
oozes juice
dripping
staining
a cotton apron.
sweetly to syrup it cooks
bubbling
to the rumbling Galaxy fan
blowing hotness
against salty sweat that balls
like candy
sliding
down flushed cheeks.
stirring carefully,
sometimes carelessly
damp hands swat flies
and the noon siren hollers from town
as shoes stick to the jelled linoleum.
dip
pour
tighten
hot clean Mason jars and
settle in a water bath.
tidy up
cool down
fish out
jars glisten on cheesecloth rows
lined like plowed fields
in pink watermelon prints
and in the falling of the day
when shades are pulled
dry coolness draws heat
from sweaty skin twitching
to a tin beat
pop!
pop!
pop!
sealed and saved
until little and b ig
voices around the breakfast table say,
“Hand me down some of that Summer Time.”
Blue Cotton Memory 
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