Sugarplums

This weekend, I was fortunate enough to be far from the overcrowds of the Hamptons, though still freeloading in a separate oasis, where the scene was not, but the spots on the sundeck were for the taking. And I took, for multiple hours, for laying, for splashing, for nothing.

We welcomed the blue sear of Sunday because Saturday was spent overcast and downcast, flicking lines into the creek and missing each lurking fish. So, this morning we bounded down to a carved out spot, beyond the tennis courts, and on the hill, with a full, clear view of the mountains, and dragged our chairs to the grass at the edge.

SPF, check. Sunglasses, check. Trashy novella exposing the sexy trysts of Washington wives, check. Deciding the swiftest route to money and power is bedding a senator, check.

Between pages, a thought. Hers was a fantastic idea, far better than any I've had this summer. Icing the market’s sugarplums, and stowing them underneath our borrowed beach recliners. As the sun bathed us in UV waves, we’d pluck a plum from the crinkly bag and relish the cold, the sweet, the tart. Then we plunged in the pool, sideswimming happy children and their 'noodles'.

I felt very William Carlos Williams, very much transported back to the assembly that started our high school Mondays, where the assistant principal would read us a poem at the podium, her voice husky with weight. Otherworldly, for some reason that I do not quite understand, devouring something so foreign to my day to day, and so oddly perfect because of just that. I had never tasted that amazing taste, but many before me had. I was struck by that, I am still discovering all the time the limits of what I know at odds with what I think I know. In my mind, a broken, beautiful record of poetry that I did not pen.

“I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold”

And then, as my shins burned unbeknownst to me, a repeat of my own sugarplum dreams in which I fantasized about my future as near as tomorrow, and what it may bring, or rather, what I may bring to it.