This week’s poem, Janie J. Gendron’s “Pleasure,” saturates us with the lush beauties of July and of childhood. I love the richly sultry scents, colors and sensations of this scene, and the expansive, timeless world the poem finds within just these few moments.

Gendron is a member of the York Art and Poetry group and the Maine Poets Society. She is a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in York Harbor, and she lives in York.

Pleasure
By Janie J. Gendron

Wild plums in the backyard, my small child

fingers stained with plum juice, pulp, skin

eating like no tomorrow

there was no tomorrow then

just the waft of honeysuckle, plum blossoms

July heat, hum of bees

grass lush with ripe fallen plums

one by one crushed in my mouth

as if I swallowed sun sky tree ground,

as if I needed nothing more.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Pleasure,” copyright 2022 by Janie J. Gendron, appears by permission of the author.

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