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The Ripe Plums of August

Each August
there are three trees I steal from
as I eat my way across town.

The sweetest plums are purple,
the biggest, yellow,
the most surprising, red blush.

Thank you, Michael.
Thank you, Micah.
Thank you, Pat.

Do you see me pick your plums
and keep on walking as I spit
the pits into roadside weeds?

If I steal enough plums,
some year our little village
may become an orchard.

By then we may be songbirds
flying over the random rows,
our beaks poking a single hole

into each ripe plum.

—
Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books include Waving Fly Swatters at Angels and On Dufur Hill. She often writes about her small town (pop. 635) of Dufur. The crops in Dufur are white winter wheat and sweet kids.

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