Because we all want to write more poems.
Love Affair
I had a love affair with a tree once
couldn’t take it with me
had to let it go—
you know—
with the house
but each year as spring approaches…
my thoughts wander back
to white blossoms and filtered sunlight
and I want to ask
are you okay?
are they treating you well?
do they appreciate you?
the way I did, I mean
and I wish I could stand next to you
feel you
reach up and pick that first exquisite plum of the season
bite through your purple skin
into your burgundy flesh
and
letting the juice run down my chin
feel that explosion of sweet-tart bliss
you kept me in the kitchen
six weeks each hot July
dealing with your abundance
canning chutneys and jellies and jams
putting up pricked plums in light honey syrup
sweat dripping down my face and under my arms
taking basketfuls to Mary McAnena
for the homeless at Hart Park
one morning of one year
after weeks of hot canning
strolling out to find your still-profligate branches
had dropped bushelfuls of ripe satsumas
I stood beneath you
threw up my hands and pleaded
“Stop! Stop!”
the next summer
the meagerest of harvests
chastised, I never did that again
seventeen years we lived and danced together
seventeen years nurtured each other
such love
such love
it must’ve been our love that made your plums
so succulently sweet
- Michele McFadden's Shared Poems
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Comments
Michele McFadden
March 3, 2013
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Love Affair
Because someone other than Clayton needs to write something...
Clayton Medeiros
March 3, 2013
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Love
Love is always a wonderful subject. I like the foil of the plum tree. The poem could almost be a series of poems about love and long term relationships like the one with the plum tree. I could see and feel the spring, the harvest, the kitchen overabundance.
Michele McFadden
March 4, 2013
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Clayton's words
Thank you so much! Makes me happy.
Michael Mayhew
March 4, 2013
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I understand!
Michele - I, too, am the steward of a tree. A massive oak in the front yard that I am extremely fond of. It came with the house (I suspect was here before the house), and both my wife and I are in love with it.
Lovely love poem!
Benjamin Gorman
March 4, 2013
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This is a good'un
I enjoy the epic-ness of it, the story that unfolds over time. I feel like I'm carried along over the years. Very intimate. Lovely. And, yes, it's about time someone break Clayton's streak!