Kammi and I met, by chance, one hot August afternoon,
she and I each from either side of the overgrown line fence,
each from either side of the brambles and thickets where
the Buckthorn and Wild Plum by then grew—the Holsteins
and other domestic stock, long since gone, as was the fence,
its posts already rotted and barbwire rusted into the ground,
with neither anything, anymore, to hold in …nor to hold out.
Kammi was eight, and she giggled out loud when we met
face-to-face, when we’d each crawled on our stomachs
to that small, grassy space, the one surrounded by trees with
overripe wild plums, fragrant to a fault, falling to the ground.
Myself? I was nine, the bad-boy neighbor kid, a year ahead.
Kammi and I gathered only the best wild plums, first picking
close above off the heavy branches and then off the ground, ones
without bug holes and/or juices oozing out …all for our moms.
I used my straw hat. Kammi had a pail. And, when we were
done, we sat side-by-side, soaking up sun, hugging our knees.
We talked about kid stuff. Just what? I don’t remember;
But I still smell her shampoo, whenever I smell wild plums.
Seven years later (15 & 16), I chanced a call. We made
a plan to gather wild plums, together …again for our moms!
“Of course!” Kammi laughed and rhetorically agreed. “Only,
this time bring a blanket! That’s about all we should need!
“Oh, yeah… And, can you snitch some beer from your folk?”
Where to begin… Purple plums stained my knees and other
parts of my jeans. Like the pair of matching, purple stains
on the front of Kammi’s thin blouse. We laughed as we met,
there being not trace, anymore, of where the line fence once
stood. Kammi no longer giggled, and the sun felt sooo good!
Kammi applied repellant clear down to our toes …on all
we chose to expose! So, the yellow jackets paid us no mind.
Later, our moms asked, separately, how it was that our clothes
came to be so dusty and stained. But neither Kammi, nor I
gave up what we’d done with all those extra wild plums!
We still saved plenty, though, for our moms’ wild plum pies!
Thomas A. Thrun's poems are influenced by the poetry of Robert Frost and his Wisconsin farming heritage, as well as by other present-day poets. His poetry also can be found in the 2022 and 2024 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar (Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets), Moss Piglet anthology, (Krazines.com, WI, Dec. 2022) and Hunger: An Anthology (Transcendent Zero Press, Houston, TX, 2022), among other anthologies. Thrun, retired with his wife in Wauwatosa, WI, is a former editor of award-winning weekly newspapers in Wisconsin and Washington State. He enjoys spoiling his 9 and 10-year-old grandsons and working with wood, kindness and empathy.