It's amazing what can endure
a frost too late in the season.
Somehow that plum tree
in our back field survived
and every year of my childhood,
my mother and I would hazard
the nettles and barbed wire
along the hardpan trail
to pack our pails with sweetness.

Often we went days too late
and the fruit was fallen and ruined
or hornets had hollowed the flesh
beneath the bruises like the disease
doctors would discover swarming
inside her in the quick years to come,
but each was really a year spent
as if literally without limit,
as if free of its own stone.

These would cost a bundle
at the grocery, she said.
I shrugged my widening shoulders,
not caring what she thought.
For chores as dumb as these,
allowance was not enough.
I knew less than nothing
about the cost of loving
and its share of regret.