So long ago now since we picked beach plums.
I parted the rose thorns,
while she reached in and harvested the fruits.
My finger was stained with a drop of red.
Her hands were awash with purple.
I had a sharp, focused, pinprick pain.
Her arms mildly ached all over.
We divided the plums into two bags
which she carefully rationed for equal weight.
Then she waxed poetic about pots and pans,
and the thrill of boiling pulp down to jellied sweets.
She decreed the exact procedure.
(She'll hold the pot, and I the strainer.)
She led the way on our trek back
along the footpath by the highway.
The faintest, faintest, chill was in the September air.
My eyes were fixed on the pattern
of swaying curves across her jeans,
and the way her long hair bobbed on and off her back.
Poison ivy grew among the grasses,
but we didn't notice till we reached the exit ramp.
There I was cut off from her for she didn't wait,
and a caravan of exiting cars
kept me from catching up.

Years later on another September day, exiting that same ramp,
I saw the back of a lady walking with her beau,
with swaying curves across her jeans.
Both were toting bags of plums of equal size.
I stopped. Brakes screeched behind me. Loud curses.
The couple turned.
Her face.
It was someone else.
Yet more curses.
I had no real destination but I had to move.
I shouted poison ivy along the road and gunned the gas.
The suspicious couple eyed me
as if I were crazy.