Reading my blog-sister Lou's post this morning about the pears and plums Reb brought to her, I was so touched that I knew I had to steal this experience for a poem. I hope they don't mind it. It seems to be emblematic of all the things we want to do for each other as human beings, and which I feel I do not do as well as I might, caught up in the web of my own individual existence so thoroughly. Obviously, I am still working on this, but I think it will be good.
The Offering
She came with a paper sack
half bursting with sweetness—
yellow pears and plums
from local trees, filling the air
with their perfume, till the bees
reel, giddy, around the tree,
and the ill-tempered wasps
forget to sting in this abundance.
On an October morning, someone,
perhaps it was she, or the boy,
straddling the branches, with a canvas
bag slung over one shoulder,
hand them down, and then
she takes them to a friend
because what else can she offer
but a bit of the hillside
and the short sweetness?
Her friend takes this bag
full of autumn, the golden
pears, smooth and heavy,
the blushing plums, and puts
some in a leaf-shaped bowl,
cuts some, gilded with brown
sugar, and the wisp-thin man
spoons them up and smiles
at the sweetness of canyon
pears, in their brief season.
9 comments:
This one is really lovely! I can't help but think of a famous William Carlos Williams poem because your descriptions, like his, make me want to pick up the fruit and savor every bite!
Congrats on your newly accepted poem!
Aw, lovely and sweet, Robbi.
Thank you Robin. I love that poem WCW poem too, and of course, I was thinking about it at the time I was writing.
Lou,
Glad you like it. I guess it is my offering, since I don't see myself climbing a tree.
Each peach pear plum.
Very fine -
Thanks for the gift that keeps giving, Reb.
I came back because I wanted to read it again - though I don't know how to discuss peotry properly - BUT I DO so like the movement of this one how it goes from place to place.
Thanks Reb. I think I am growing in rhythmic and emotional directions and that these things go together.
As you asked:
Tend to want to reverse 2 and 3 and tinker... or is the sack literally torn a bit because so full? But fruit tends to burst with sap... Slight blurring there.
Do you need "ill-tempered"?
No comma before "till"?
2nd stanza: too many commas
"hands"
What do you gain there by the uncertainty of who is doing the action in the second stanza? If it's important, it's not clear why. If it's not, why be uncertain? Why not choose? (I'm not biased one way or another; I just think you ought to think about it.)
"gilds"?
I'd pop out the comma in the last line.
Likes: the bag of autumn and short sweetness and the vivid colors and flow and the whole lush sensuality.
Okay Marly. I like the doubleness of the 2nd line, and moving it creates other problems. But I'll buy the commas, the question about "gild," and the comma in the last line. Also "ill tempered." What else would they be? What's wrong with "hands"?
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