The
Cellar
Growing
up years,
when
my sister
had
to go down to our cellar,
she’d
have me go with her.
I’d
roll my eyes and go down there
with
my naive notion
that
all the creaks, thumps,
and whines
were explainable.
No ghosts.
No boogey men. No wild animals
slipping
down the concrete block steps
into
that dark, dank, musty place
where
the water pump whirred and rapidly chugged
and
the furnace roared,
and
a large pile of coal waited to be burned.
I’d
pull the chain to the single light bulb to see
walls
lined with lots of shelves holding jars
of
jams and jellies, pickles, potatoes,
spiced
apples, green beans, and tomatoes,
and
a bin where I’d almost fall in
trying
to retrieve seven spuds.
A
big freezer filled with fish, (bass and trout mostly),
and
deer meat. We didn’t call it venison.
A
Santa cup sat on a shelf.
Why
it was down there and not
with
the other Christmas things in the attic,
I’ll
never know.
Beyond
that
underneath
the porch
a
dark room loomed.
A storage
room
filled
with who-knows-what.
Even
as brave as I was then,
I
left it to hold its treasures.
