Unripe Plums: A.E. Schulz
Unripe Plums
by A.E. Schulz
A mourning dove, perched in the neighbor’s plum tree
just outside my bedroom window, cooed in the dawn
and kept at it until my alarm went off.
The plums in that tree are just small rosy spheres,
not yet red, just in between. Not the lime green
of the pickled plums I used to love in Istanbul
or the brown of the desiccated salted plums
that I fell in love with as a child. Not the black
of the ripe plums with the honey flesh that I loved
to eat in the summer, always remembering
how the juice could drip onto the pages of a book
if I wasn’t careful.
The two-note hoot of mourning doves is as familiar
to me as the sound of running water or lawn mowers
or helicopters, common noises that floated through
my childhood bedroom windows as I read.
I was always reading. I sat on the patio in summer
eating popsicles or saltines or plums
devouring the written word as fast as I could.
When my alarm pinged, I got up, made hot lemon water,
grabbed my iPad, opened an app, and started to read.
It must have been that sliding coo,
but I read one book and then another,
such a strange thing to be doing on a weekday,
but not that strange after all. I was once
that person wandering through Ralph’s Market
trying to both read a book and do the grocery shopping.
A few years ago when my mother was dying
I stopped reading books and started listening
to them, partly because I read so fast
and listening allowed me to spend more time
with the characters, for their lives to wrap
around me during every task from doing dishes
to driving. I could be alone and not feel so isolated.
Three hours of reading became ten hours of listening.
I couldn’t remember the last time I picked up a novel
and forgot everything but the story on the page.
I ran no errands, did no work, silenced my phone
and read all day, one book after another.
I don’t even want to finish this poem
because another book is calling to me.
I feel as though I am ravenous and nothing
will quench that need except for seeing words,
no, feeling and touching the words—
like the plums in the neighbor’s yard,
some things seem to remain just out of reach.
