A Poem for a Thursday #94

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, essayist, and inventor. That last one surprised me. She invented the LongPen device which makes it possible to remotely write using a tablet and a robotic arm. The list of her books is impressive. The Handmaid’s Tale is probably the one most people are familiar with especially since it has been adapted for television. I haven’t read much of her poetry but I like this.

This is the plum season, the nights
blue and distended, the moon
hazed, this is the season of peaches


with their lush lobed bulbs
that glow in the dusk, apples
that drop and rot
sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands


No more the shrill voices that cried Need Need
from the cold pond, bladed 
and urgent as new grass


Now it is the crickets 
that say Ripe Ripe
slurred in the darkness, while the plums


dripping on the lawn outside 
our window, bursts
with a sound like thick syrup
muffled and slow


The air is still
warm, flesh moves over 
flesh, there is no


hurry


Late August
Margaret Atwood