Beach Plum Jam
The beach plums
Enjoy the dunes
High winds
Blowing sands
Salt
The company of poison ivy
And everyone who uses them
Native American
Pilgrim
Cape Codder
Tourist.
The plums flourish on lands
First purchased from sachems
Who never owned them –
Not a tree or a dune –
For four coats
Three axes
A day’s plowing with a team of oxen.
Land that has seen grazing
And whaling
Fishing and fencing
Bogs and berries.
Land that remembers the Wampanoag
Here for but three thousand years
As do we who fill our pails
Boil the plums
Separate seed from fruit
Squeeze the beach plum flesh
Extract its essence
As we squeeze each other
The sweet juices we cook
In anaerobic jars
To make the jam
To smell the sweetness
The sweat
The sour
The desirable
To lick our fingers
And in memory
To preserve it all.
Poetry
- 99 Gratitudes in 3 Minutes – A Yoga Chanting Poem
- A Poem is Born
- After The News
- Alan
- Alan Is Dead
- American Wedding, 2011
- Ask the Sphinx – 2 approaches
- Baggage Claim
- Beach Plum Jam
- Beau Dies
- between spiders
- Burnt Wood – for Bubi
- Call it what it is
- Conversation With A Ladle
- Coyote in the House
- Crow’s Song
- Day break
- Death Factories
- Death of the Dolphin
- Furry Bug
- Gospel of the Redwood
- Insects in Amber
- It: In Honor of Dr. Seuss
- Journey to Standing Rock
- Kevin Garnett in Africa
- Life among the barbarians
- Long ago, perhaps yesterday
- Mandalay Hills
- Mesquite Dunes
- Miles’ Ashes
- Miles’ Journey
- My First Yoga Teacher
- One Drop of Rain
- Salton Sea
- Self Love
- Sunrise
- The Love Life of Clams
- Throwing Away
- Uncle Sol
- What The Stones Say
- when spring arrives ice flows out of the bay
- Whispering Among The Gods
- Willow
- Winter Fog
- Work and Love are What Really Matter: a reunion poem for the BHS class of 1958 reunion
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