Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Plum Lines
ee cummings wrote of plums
enpurpled, dewy, promising
cascading nectar
chin-dripping good
I think he called them icy
and that poem always cooled me
made me taste that purple nectar
that’s what plums had come to mean to me
a worthy image
but not mine
I realize this on my street
mountain pose beneath a plum tree
feral in the public gardens
I had never really noticed
in the spring this city blooms
there’s flowers blooming everywhere
I guess we’d had some flowers here
I’d smelled them, yes, on humid mornings -
powerfully fragile, pink in fragrance -
and then they died and life went on
I gave it not another thought
and now the bough before me buckles
with the weight of gold in green
plums abound in fecundation
the size and shape of jumbo olives
skin bright green and stretched so tight
that I can see the life inside it
green is not the shade of ripeness
but on this morning green means go
how do I know that something so chartreuse
will be so sweet
I hold it in my palm, brush off
the dust that gathers on all things
I spit on it and wipe it clean
my fingers taste it - heavy, warm,
the skin a membrane over flesh
that no one’s ever touched before
I can feel its fullness bursting
I just know it will be sweet
the bite is crisp, the fruit is firm
the nectar blossoms in my mouth
that perfect pink converted to
a form that lavishes my tongue
with flavor bright and rich and deep
a tanker truck of sudden wonder
April captured in the flesh
I consume it to the pit
it is delicious
green and warm though it had been
it has become, for me, for now,
the definition of a plum
