Picking Plums

I am really sorry for
what I have just done
I know that I could have tried more
but it was really fun
-A poem I wrote in English class in 1995, after This is Just to Say (William Carlos Williams)

“Forgive me,” says William Carlos Williams’ narrator. But is he contrite? His transgression is minor, but his focus is surely on the pleasure he stole and not the act of stealing itself, much less any pain or dissatisfaction caused to the one who shares his icebox. When asked by a teacher who I deeply respected, even loved as an educator, to write a poem in this style, I boiled it down like so many overripe plums to a strong juice. In a later era, after 2010 perhaps, I may have instead just written “#SorryNotSorry.”

As noted a couple posts back, we have a plum tree in the backyard. Even weeks ago, I was maintaining that they were crabapples swelling and swaying in the breeze, periodically dropping with a gentle thud on our aging wood deck planks. They were green and hard like crabapples, but turns out they were still ripening. Now they are everywhere, molding and sticking and drawing flies to their sweet red juice.

Or I should say, that was the status this morning. But today, gently prompted by a neighbor’s kind offer to do it for us if we were still in New Mexico, Graham and I hauled his toy rake and my full-size broom, along with a dustpan and a trash bag, out to the porch to clean up. Graham’s good at cleaning up, loves to help, but he found the slippery goo of some especially aged plums disconcerting, collected a particularly welty mosquito bite on his cheek, and quickly retreated. Just before begging to go inside, he shared a bite of the plum I’d hastily Googled for an estimation of safety and taste-tested to near completion. The red juice trickled across his bug bite to make it look both more expansive and dangerous. “Good!” he assessed, with a tone of surprise, despite the fact that he loves most all food.

Once the plum-strewn battlefield of red-stained deck was reasonably clear of debris, I looked skyward to see plenty more ripe fruit where the one I’d plucked for Graham and I had come from. I snatched a silver bowl from the kitchen and returned on tiptoes to pull at the unspoiled offerings. I didn’t quite trust it enough to consume more in the process, and hours later a small tummy rumble prompted me to text the former owner’s daughter (we’d gotten a bill for her shortly after moving in) to confirm that the plums were, in fact, edible. Though they’d forgotten the variety, they assured me they were safe.

I’m not quite sure what to do with the surprising haul I got without a ladder today, much less with the whole tree’s worth of fruit if I finish the job this weekend. But I suppose we could save some to make fresh prune juice, a staple of digestion aid beloved by both my father and my son. The process of drying into prunes only to rehydrate to make into juice makes me wonder whether plum juice would have the same effect. One would imagine not, given that it would save so much time and energy and yet I don’t believe I’ve ever seen plum juice in a market. Sometimes we must go through a full process, however arduous and time-consuming, to get what we need.