With the Summer Solstice sliding in next week, thought I’d share a couple of juicy poems from Barbara Crooker’s latest book, Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024).

Though her central theme for this collection is aging, loss and grief (her poems will especially resonate with baby boomers), she balances the inevitable with hope and gratitude for those luminous moments of clarity and startling beauty that occur when we take the time to be fully present.

There are upsides to being ‘of a ripe old age’ — not the least of which is being able to enjoy summer’s generous bounty of sweet, juicy, sun-ripened fruit.

*

PLUM

Thumbprint of the moon,
blush of the summer sky.
A rim of sweetness
hemmed in damask.
Bruise-blue, ruby red,
autumn gold; the full
spectrum of sugar.  
The thrum of a tenor sax.
You brood on the tree,
biding your time.
If we're lucky, we'll 
find you whole, oval,
unstung by wasps, 
ungnawed by squirrels.
You will fill
a child's palm.
Hot juice
of an August night,
a gulp of dark wine.
A taste 
that winter,
which we know
is coming,
cannot erase.

Barbara: “Plum” came from both our terrible plum crop (we planted a little orchard when my husband retired (2 apples, 2 pears, 2 plums, 2 peaches)) and from the organic plums I bought at a local farm stand (Eagle Point).  So it’s a combination love poem to the fruit and also to the luscious “um” sounds I sprinkled throughout (including, or especially, summer) . . .

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