A Happiness of Plums

Even to say "plum" is delightful, and apparently I am not the only one to think such silly thoughts. For one, Helen Chasin has an entire poem devoted to "The Word Plum":

"The word PLUM is delicious

pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savoring murmur

full in the mouth and falling
like fruit

taut skin
pierced, bitten, provoked into
juice, and tart flesh

question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure."

And just this last week Andrews English Chair Douglas Jones commented in class that he loved Ezra Pound's choice of words in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" when he ends one of the poem's lines with "blue plums."

But "plum" is also a bluish purple thought that wants to tumble me out of a plum tree back into Langdon, NH-- a child light enough that I don't squash any of the fruits I land on beneath our neighbor's little stand of trees--to scuffle around in the cold autumn grass with our German-Shepherd-Husky Duke, before he had cancer, and to gobble up the plums my mum tried to save from the bellies of my siblings, cousins, and I.

And it is the color of jam in that little book from the Shed Porter Memorial Library in which the family has so many plums and so much plum jam that they become round with its sugars, and fix their floor tiles with it, and dream about it, and are ruled by a purple stickiness. I don't think that it would scare me anymore.

Even now they are looking at me--juicy, plump, and bursting with their tender fibers, waiting for me to follow them back to the little story my Aunt Jean wrote about a little girl named Emily collecting plums with her brother and sister, putting them in a box, and taking them home to stew on the stove and stir with a long wooden spoon.

But instead I can only place their cool selves in my hand and eat them at mealtimes and othertimes, telling them that another day I might have the time to hold tight to their little stems and allow them to roll me back into the stories they come from...

Right now I only have the time for their happiness.

On This Day

Seventy-seven and nearly-a-half Julys were amongst his keeping, though only thirteen Mays were amongst mine, and it was a Saturday, and we were called and told that Alhzeimers had won, and we without a grandpa. I only ever got so close as to hug him once or twice that I can remember, and that with great fear--not that he was big and fearsome, but stern and grim and years of battling the world against my tender few... yet how it is that I cried so, and that September 22 never creeps out of the morning mist but I recall a grandpa who I never saw except he wrapped in mystery and gruff whiskers and I in shyness and distance. And so I think of those I know dearly--far away--and with much much fondness.

Psalm 23:3a

This waterlily is white--and rightfully so. It has petaled its life in sweet water, has been touched only by rain and dew from the heavens and the stray minnow school's nibbling, and has for its center a dollop of fragrant brightness to spread--alighting on kayaks, hiding amongst curls, and coming home along with wet clothing and a transparent snail.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good (Psalm 107:8-9)

Think on These Things

What if you had woken up this morning to face another day as usual, beginning in a wheelchair and a ride in the bus to a school you would not be at if your IQ was above 55?

What if you wanted to be friendly to the new person sitting in the corner, but everyone told her not to shake your hand because they always seemed to misinterpret your welcoming actions as aggressive grabs?

What if you could only nod or shake your head when someone asked you questions you knew the answers to, and if your hands were perpetually in a position that looked somewhat like yoga?

What if the morning's feat was to recognize your own written name, first and last, and maybe say it?

What if you were miserable but could not explain the emotional turmoil within you and could only let it leak out in fights with your neighbors, complaints about a hot forehead, moans about a headache?

What if you couldn't read the Bible because you were illiterate and could never hope to be otherwise, and if you could not fathom the image of a Heavenly Father?

To echo Jane Kenyon, "It might have been otherwise."

"Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Say to those with anxious heart,
'Take courage, fear not.
Behold your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you.'
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
Then the lame wiill leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy"(Isaiah 35:3-6a)

The Importance of Being Joyful

Once upon a time her name was Sheba. That was back when her muscles were atrophied, and when her coat was full of black grime, and when she lived at a long dark barn in Connecticut. I don't think she was acquainted with very much love in those days.

It has been nearly ten years now since that afternoon when we first went to see her. I remember having a sore throat throughout our four hour journey, and vaguely remember thinking it nifty that she was six months younger than I was. I was too scared to ride her, but my siblings did.

Several days before we brought her home, my sister had the bed-time epiphany that Sheba's new name would be Oh-Be-Joyful, and so she arrived at her friendly new homestead already bearing a new name--a call to joyfulness which she has never turned down since.

I had not seen her for almost two years when I went to visit her this last week, and during this time, she too, like her buddy Grayson, has gone to live with a new family. I will not deny that her coat was not as shiny as it was when we used to brush her every morning, neither was her tail as beautiful, since she has scrubbed much of the top hair off, and there were burrs in it as well as in her mane and forelock. But she still has her new name--she is still Joyful-- and that at least is not something that burrs, nor dirt, nor years can take away from her.

An Office Worker's Rain

enter ID, squint at screen
half-blind, wholly hapless,
scrawl advisor, number, name
on edge-- repeat. watch umbrella
crawl between glass doors, drag feet through
dingy-lit lanoleum,
shoes squeaking a scream into gagged
air, doors swinging shut a glimpse of green
on gray as always inside, sigh.

Lest I Forget

What a queer thing is memory: sporatic, embarrassing, ticklish, and rather jolly.

Upon reading an e-mail from a friend who recently visited a clear-watered small lake called Lempster Long Pond, I was reminded of the many times we got up at 5a.m. on a Sabbath morning in order to get to the rock at the far end by about 6, to eat breakfast there, jump in to the scrubbingly cold green-depths, and get back in time for church. And the huge snapping turtles in the swampy bay and the loons toting around their chicks on their backs, and the great blue heron balancing on one foot with great dignity in even his dangling head tassel, and Oscar the dog who we would let off onto the shore and who would swim the last bit.

Today I found my favorite pen, a very fine-pointed thing of the metallic aqua color one sometimes finds on special types of flies that crash into one's window screens on hot days; an implement that instantly guiltifies me about my pen-thieving tendencies, and yet pours me full up with the pleasure of the friendship of Keiron Hall who later presented me with my going away present--the coveted inkwell that makes one take too many notes in class because it is so delightful to write with.

When I saw the two girls headed toward me with a white "Y" shared between them originating from some ipod gadget, I squeaked and immediately remembered listening to one of my favorite Chopin Piano Concertos with my mother in a similar fashion, letting the music pump a connection into us that words would not have created quite so beautifully, and I giggled again at how I would deviously play around with the volume and skip songs and how Mum would give me a I-love-you-so-much-and-you-are-an-imp smirkle.

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Random memories are exhilarating as well as perplexing, especially when they bring into one's mind a Bible verse one read three years ago on such-and-such-a-day-when-the-sky-looked-so-green-that-one-found-ants-crawling-in-it sort of thing, or when the memory text one learned when one was six presents itself for inspection to a shocked audience of recent members. We are promised that we need never worry about the things we should say in regards to God and His glory in us-- and I suppose that it is through His sense of humor and His delight in rambuctious rememberings that He will work this out. And I can recall now quite a few such specimens.