.
Alan
Shefsky
Selections
from "Plums/Poems"
The Plum's Life
.
Plum Poem Home
The Plum’s Life
A nectarine wants to be held,
a peach touched,
a plum is ambivalent.
Like the others it is tender and bruises easily,
but it pretends toughness,
red and wearing its skin boldly.
Nor does a plum so quickly give in
to ripeness, or yield
to a gentle hand or finger.
Indeed if a plum had its way
it might never ripen at all,
fancying itself content in its firmness.
Even its name is unyielding,
hard at the edges,
the mouth forced closed in speaking it.
Peach at least allows one to linger,
to finish with the lips apart,
and nectarine presses the tongue softly against the palate.
Plum is abrupt: start, stop,
nothing but business,
no invitation to stay.
This, at least, is the plum
plum likes to present,
straightforward, to the point.
Yet plum knows better,
for a plum wants what a peach wants,
what a nectarine wants:
to be held,
to be taken by warm and fleshy fingers,
to delight in its own ripeness,
to burst forth.