Winter Is Coming

By Nancy Sweetland

On shelves in our basement,

My mother has put

Jars and bottles all full of stuff:

Apples and carrots and beans and peas,

Corn and ketchup—things like these.

In my memory,

I have stored

All the summer that I could hoard:

Grass and flowers and windblown trees,

Baseball and swimming and buzzing bees.

In cold and snowy wintertime,

We’ll bring back summer days:

We’ll warm our stomachs

And warm our hearts

With what we’ve stored away.

Illustrated by Mark Robison