Golden Harvest, with apologies to Wallace Stevens

A beautiful fall day, my front porch rail, a Mason jar, one blue jay feather, a sprig of red berries, and three hickory nuts, their cases with the smell of home, that sharp pull of earth and childhood: even my humble jar pulled the "wilderness" around it and "took dominion."

Anecdote of the Jar

Wallace Stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround the hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.