At Summer’s End by Elizabeth Gauffreau

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At Summer’s End

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We come upon a bank of beach roses

High above Portsmouth Harbor, rose hips

Unexpectedly signaling the end

Of summer. I stop to take a photograph

Crop tight the crimson ellipsis

Crop tight the leafy green symmetry.

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In my memory

The fruit is smaller, rounder

The bushes a low sprawl

Of dusty leaves where sand meets road

Above Hannaford Cove, cold sweat

Of exposed water pipe beneath my bare feet.

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From somewhere behind me

My mother says, Aunt Etta

Gathered rose hips to make jelly. Aunt Etta

Was my grandmother’s aunt.

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In her memory

My mother is pregnant

The summer Aunt Etta

Comes to stay at the cottage

High above Hannaford Cove.

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Through dormered window

She watches bemused

As the small stooped figure

Moves among the dusty bushes

Easing the rose hips off their stems.

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In her memory at cliff’s edge

Etta strips rose hips from great sprawls of bushes.

Etta must boil rose hips in blackened woodstove kettle

Boil them thick, strain them clean. Rose hip jelly

Will taste of summer’s end

When the farm is frozen over

And the wind blows unforgiving

Off the Bay of Fundy.

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Elizabeth Gauffreau holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. She is currently the Assistant Dean of Curriculum and Assessment at Champlain College Online in Burlington, Vermont. Recent poetry publications include One Sentence Poems, Smoky Quartz, Medical Literary Messenger, The Ekphrastic Review, and Pinyon. Recent fiction publications include Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her debut novel Telling Sonny was published by Adelaide Books in 2018. Learn more about her work at http://lizgauffreau.com

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