Dorothea Lange, November 1940, National Archives
The Plum Tree
In June, I noticed it first
Next to the worm-eaten apple tree
Dark bulbs blooming modestly under shapely leaves
Just growing there by the sidewalk, surprising
In July, its limbs grew heavy. Volunteers hit the ground,
shameless and redolent, an offering to ants
In my dusk dreams, I would come back, fetch them
And then what? The sweetness, alone, would kill me
Each night, I peered, nervous, into the house
Plucked the plumpest one, a purple purse of satin
Tight then wet, flesh and juice. In public!
Stain down my hands and face, my scarlet affair
In late July, I waited for someone to come, to notice them too
Anxious for the waste of it, I thought up baskets to collect them
No one came to harvest, least of all me
Some fell in the morning, some in the night. A lot.
Tonight, on our walk, the smell of plums,
warm on the earth, made my chest constrict
I crept under the canopy and found the last three
I gave them out like fishes and loaves and thought of love
–August 2, 2017, Portland, Oregon
***
On your 42nd birthday
Some nights, the sky is green-grey like your eyes,
electric and hushed, a revival tent before the miracle–
a thrum of whales stitching their ancient seam in the sea
Some days, your soul spirals upward like blossoms,
meadowlark songs skipped like stones on a prairie–
light from the water trilling up at tree leaves
Some years, the humming of life is colossal,
cello played to a canyon whose limestone wails back.
Others drip by on calcium spires into sullen pools
I’ve known you since you were 29
Today you are 42
“Why haven’t you written this poem before now?” you ask
Before now, I did not know:
how the iron filings of your will
seek the lock steel of my heart
how your mind makes a guide rope
mine can follow in the dark
how my body returns to yours
like a soldier undeployed
At the start
I knew you were the face of a tiny owl,
the edge of a continent overlooking the sea,
a wonder
But now I know
you are that miracle
that comes to pass, despite disbelief
–May 18, 2018, Portland Oregon
Ontology Schmology 