Make-ahead steel-cut oat-meal

We begin storing all of our food in jars, a callback
to a time before plastic, when the world was simpler,
or at least we think so, we whisper to ourselves
as we spoon the oats out of the pot, spill half
on the floor, stomp at the dog come to lick up the leavings.
The truth might be more complicated, but we can’t see it.
It hovers around us at the edge of our perception:
an anxious or over-proud parent, we’re not sure which.
But the truth has read about the dangers of BPA, about landfills
and recycling, about petroleum, silica, rubber, and glass.
The truth knows that in the short term, none of it matters,
nor does it in the long term. It’s the medium term, the term
of human lives, that quibbles and pulls and beats at meaning
like a fly hovering around a porchlight. The truth knows
the world is a bell, rung only once, fading to silence.