Wild Plums

For Frank

Plums ripen, greengage & saintrose

dangling worlds

in the leafed shade, staining

my daughter’s white dress

drawing the summer wasps, the ants

Between breakfast & lunch in this ordinary

daylight the sky splits open

or the spine, as a book.

Death changes meanings.

The end is not the same

If I were to hold you now

how light, a film of salt

& ash on my wet palms:

my young children

weigh my arms, those plum bushels

& though I look for you

straining my eyes against the late sun

& the wasps’ flash & sting

red rover, from your dark country

no one crosses over

(it is a bit like sending little paper boats out along the gutters, this flinging of old and new poems into the internet world. And I never really liked the painful game Red Rover. This was one of the poems printed a long while back in Prairie Schooner; it was on my mind because of the recent deaths in my life, including the death of the father of my highschool love. The man never liked me, for many complex reasons, yet I found I cried when the news came. And it will soon be the anniversary of dear Frank's death as well. The year has intricate memories).