This is Just What I Waited For. Isn't It?

"Through One Pane"  From Nathaniel Hawthorne's Study, The Old Manse

This is Just What I Waited For.  Isn’t It?

On considering the parable of Jesus

about the man who saves

his wine for the best guest and nobody, even

the king good enough.

and so he dies and his prize is drunk

by waifs and beggars. 

I think:    just the beans and peas we put up when you were 

    still alive are waiting, and they've been pulled, every each and all the last
    of them from the shelf, lifted,  and their lid sucked up.  And a breath
    is let off the liquor—yours leaning once over the mouth
    of it, cheak leaning into the teaspon of salt--I think

                something critical in me wants to wait… it is enough...
                for a while…you being down there bottled, your hand
                prints on the glass, just to see them staying there backstage,
                preserved, and when the light was thrown

                on they'd say we stayed though all this time, and they’d be fully seen,
                but just,

just us you and me in the dark a largo of dark that though we’d never
                built it with our own hands we did compose ourselves in it 

                shape and contain it shape a shelf on a shelf for it and the glass Mason

                and Ball jars all jewel, they are a proof of this, our labor our hard

                waiting taking place while we clean and clear

                and clip away everything that would occupy the earth

just last year (your last though how could we know) and then that last jar
                can I see it on my own shelf? maybe it’s

                honey a couple three years old and when I put it up

                I put it up to share with my friend who was on her way

                but was delayed and remains delayed like there was some

                hailstorm maybe and a whole new crop needs sowing over her,

just over the top of her and another friend dead because of the deep defeating
                toil of it all.  

                The sowing I mean the cause of the delay.  But what does a jar

                of honey know only now the slow going

                toward stone (I glimpse inklings of it in the dim when I want

                what?  what do I want?  Something not that not that it's just,

just that I’d waited saying listen when I open you they’ll be here

                and they’ll be close and close their eyes and they’ll drink

                it like it were wine and the work of wine and the bees

                generations of them long dead ago will all at once rise up

                from the spoon they’ll buzz in our mouths this and it is

just (it is) just what we waited for I waited for and now one guest is

                dead and never coming and one guest is far

                away and never coming and I thought it’s crazy

                I know but I did I thought waiting waiting not opening

                the jar for years and years meant they still were there was

just a chance but now I know they’re not and there’s just

    not there’s just not a chance and spoonful after spoonful

    I dip and eat I do I dip and eat and suffocate on all that was and is

    too sweet and all that still is and catch my breath

    and hold it and feel my teeth erode: and only when I know
    it's the last of it all is just inhaling the empty jar
    yes, just inhaling it, just enough