-This poem reflects on drying summer herbs as an act of preservation, where change becomes a way of carrying fragrance, nourishment, and memory beyond the season itself.
They hang in bundles from the beam,
their green gone softer into gray,
basil, thyme, and rosemary,
turned downward in the quiet air.
All summer they were touched by hands,
cut fresh beside the garden path,
their fragrance rising under sun,
their leaves still tender with the rain.
Now slowly in the shaded room,
they give their water back to time,
while every stem grows light enough,
to keep what mattered through the cold.
So much of late summer asks this,
not how to hold what cannot stay,
but how to change it into something,
that can nourish us when light is gone.