The Pantry

Late last night as I was stumbling

through the basement looking for a can

of peaches, I rediscovered the old pantry.



The small wood door was all covered

in chipped white paint, hidden

under the stairs next to the tornado shelter.



The door almost looked like it could have led to a new

part of the house or a different house entirely.



I had almost forgotten about this room

and its cinder block walls lined with shelves

upon shelves of jars. Jars of pears next to jars

of applesauce, pickles and whole, skinless tomatoes

that looked like something out of a science fiction

miniseries that I would never let anywhere near

a plate of spaghetti.



Beyond the single light bulb's gaze in the far corner

of the room stood the vegetable storage bed I helped

my father build when I was seven, maybe eight.



The dark shape of the squat frame of two by fours

and galvanized metal screen could have been a creature

with legs,

maybe a tortoise.



It was the ragged blanket thrown over the top

that made it look like just an old overused

mattress on the cement instead.



I lifted up a side of the blanket to look at the potatoes

with their overgrown, overzealous

buds twisting and twining

with each other in the way that I would imagine

octopi might look at the bottom of the ocean,



if only there was enough light



for us to see them doing whatever it is

that they do way down there



at the bottom of the world.