Up on Grandma's kitchen shelf,
a temptation crocked and lidded
tight:
her cookie jar, it beckons me,
well-worn, once-cracked, now-mended -
not with mud new-daubed,
but gold
in every crack

it gleams;

but that is not the treasure
that has seized my heart.

Nay. The treasure is inside.

One time only did I reach within,
one time many-scolded.

"Not for you," she muttered,
gummy, toothless, ancient hag;
"Not for you," she growled.

"Not for any fingers seeking just to
fill their ******* mouths."

And I wondered as she said it,
as I've wondered always since,
at the force and heart within her words,
for the cookie jar was spent.

Empty. Not a crumb inside
- I felt it all around -
empty, all the cookies gone,
to places I had never trod
- in waking hours at least.

Empty - not a crumb inside, but...
...something brushed by me.
Warm and soft and...
...gentle,
like an angel's kiss, or wing;
the golden glitter of a teardrop as it
hangs in sunlit dream.

That - that feeling
is what brushed against me
(wrist-deep and guilty) in my
Grandma's cookie jar.

She bound the jar with leather
and shelved it up much higher,
and scolded me from morning until night.
But heart aflame and
eye caught in wonder,
the magic had bound me up
tight.

I dared not take it down again,
I dared not wrest it's slumber
with another groping, clumsy
hand;
but my eye and heart were on it
and as years passed,
hunger grew.

+

When Grandma died - a miracle,
considering her spells -
at last I dared to keep the jar,
up on my own cook-shelf.
And slowly I unbound it,
leather strap by leather strap,
as the days turned into winter
and the star-symphony danced.

Three years it took to free that
crock
(her spells had hardened
by some brew brought on by
death),
and when it sat untarnished, free,
once more the gold
did glew.

Humble earthen vessel, uplifted
by destruction
and the searing introduction of a molten,
fiery grace:
a simple cookie jar it was,
(this I knew)
and empty as a floor too-swept and clean.

Yet still I longed to feel the
brush of life once more,
glimmering like a secret in
the depth of that fair jar.

So I dipped one little finger in,
crossed the plane marked by it's mouth,
and waited for the magic of
the past.

It came near by gradual nibbles, a skitter-fly
ashamed
to be acknowledged, so it seemed;
but gradually one finger became two,
two three,
and three a hand.

Skitter-fly no longer, the golden pulse
it surged,
stronger by a hundred-fold
than ever I felt before;
and coiled betwixt my fingers
like a honey-snake
and warm.

I knew it then, the cookie jar,
and the cookie jar knew me.

Desire birthed and twirling,
fostered long, but now set free.

I sighed and let the crocken lid
fall back down in its place,
plunged once more the jar in black, and
emptied now for me, it sat
up on my cook-*** stack,
and winked no more
- no more for me.

After that I set a rule up,
for small-kin in my home,
that the cookie jar was sacred,
as it was in Grandma's time.
And any hand that snatched from it,
would turn-about be smacked.

+

And then I sat and waited
for a grubby little hand,
to reach down into empty space
and spark again
the gloam.