Two Golden Shovel Poems After William Carlos Williams, by Sharon Tracey

Basket of Plums, by Anne Vallayer-Coster (France) 1769

Basket of Plums (by Anne Vallayer-Coster, 1769)
                                 —after William Carlos Williams 

Yesterday, I 
saw your painting, and have 
been wondering if you had eaten
one before setting up the 
still life, the plummy plums
heaped in the basket, so lushly plump that
we might taste them. Were 
you tempted in 
the moment, in the
days when an icebox
was no more than a dream and
before you knew which
way life would turn for you;
I mean, were
you thinking you could live on art, probably
or maybe, saving
yourself for 
yourself, hungry for more than breakfast?
Were you worried how long the plums would last? Forgive 
me for not knowing you before yesterday, me--
I just try to keep up with things as they 
pile up like overripe plums. Were 
you aware how delicious
they would be, so 
luscious and sweet,
so perfectly paired with the teacakes and 
the glass of water, so 
real, that for a moment, the world was not so cold.

Untitled (Purple Brown), by Mark Rothko (USA, b. Latvia) 1957

Purple Brown (by Mark Rothko, 1957)
         —after William Carlos Williams 

Someday, I 
hope to have 
been able to say, I have eaten
just as much as the 
soul needs, tasted enough plums
of joy and suffering, accepted that
precarious balance, a feeling you were 
able to plum and muster in
the heart’s cloister, the 
body’s generator. No icebox
for you but something warmer and 
stirred in thin washes and across scales, which
steeped in the aftermath of rainstorm, and you 
who could plumb a line deeper, were 
you among the early risers, probably
sensing a holiness in the early hour and saving
seconds of time for 
yourself, long before breakfast.
Will god forgive 
the human tendency to dwell on “me”--
our trials and trespasses while they 
of other histories slip past us, and were 
we awake or did we only dream delicious
thoughts? I see a field suffused with plum, so
radiant that I linger, the chapel quiet, the children sweet
and still asleep. There is something I have lost and
I have come to find it. We harbor dreams and so
we hope. We gather what we can against the cold.

Sharon Tracey

Sharon Tracey is the author of two poetry collections, Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2020) and What I Remember Most is Everything (All Caps Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Lily Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, The Banyan Review, Terrain.org, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. sharontracey.com