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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Your Sunday Poem

From “American Primitive,” poems by Mary Oliver.

THE PLUM TREE

Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’t

succumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it’s anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way to temp happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.

2 comments:

Mike Green said...

I liked this poem very much, thanks Ann.
I took much pleasure with a plum tree in my wild youth, first eating the oh-so-sweet fruit, and then discovering the happy result of aging the juice.
Ah, to be a fourteen year old scientist again.

Built my first and only backyard still for the plum wine, trusted friends from the neighborhood were recruited for the first (secret) tasting....

Never dabbled in distillery chemistry again, and I still can't stomach brandy.

The only way to tempt happiness in your mind is to take it.....and be happy for it.

Wild Plums.

Churadogs said...

I also remember heading every summer up to Banning/Beaumont to U-Pick apricots. Those were the Blenheims, full of flavor, too soft to really ship well. Those used to be about the only kind you could get so to me that was the taste of an apricot. Years later the small orange ping-pong balls in the market, tasteless and flat, were called apricots, but naw, they aren't. Happily, a See Canyon grower is growing blenheims at the farmer's market and every early summer, I go get my fill. Yum.