A BOWL OF PLUMS by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin and Sal Buttaci

                          A BOWL OF PLUMS  

          Painting by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, 1728;

                   Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994

Clarisse was not at the market this morning.

What made me think she would be?

How many mornings have I walked the dog,

battled with him at the leash 

because it was not his usual route,

a neighborhood so unfamiliar as to frighten him?

Like the dog we are all habit's creatures:

we do what we know how, what we've done,

what we expect of ourselves, don't we?

It is when we find ourselves stranded

from our routines, in unfamiliar neighborhoods,

that we become fearful, our neat lives disheveled,

the schedule we follow suddenly failing us.

Clarisse was not at the market again this morning.

Pulling on his leash as if I had unintentionally strayed,

Roi strained his terrier head in the direction of home,

but I ignore him. Instead, I look from merchant to merchant:

the flower stand where you would bring home 

magenta freesias or pink canterbury bells 

so the flowers, you said, would have a good home;

the fish peddler, the wine dealer, the dairyman--

I cannot find Clarisse anywhere.

Still, each morning now for weeks, I return here,

afraid to lose hope, a slave to the old life.

One day she disappeared.

I repeat those words like a punish lesson

over and over again.

One day she disappeared.

One day she disappeared.

"I am not happy anymore," she said that morning

in a voice so sad it did not sound her own.

"Who is? I replied, making light of what I saw as light.

"Life's a struggle, isn't it?" I asked.  

Clarisse was not at the market this morning.

Roi is impatient: he has taken now to growling.

She may be gone but he is hungry, anxious to go home

where his food and water dishes will be filled for him

as they are filled every day. 

It is the way Roi expects things to be done.

At the fruit and vegetable stand visions flood my head.

Here where Clarisse and I gave our own names to the

apple, the orange, the potato--we gave them all names!

"A pound of Eves," she'd say for the apples,

"Two pounds of" this and that, which made us laugh

when the old woman asked us to point to what we wanted.

"Can I help you, Monsieur?" she asks me now.

"Yes, I am looking for Clarisse," I say to her.

"Clarisse?" she asks, reaching for the blackberries.

"These, Monsieur?  Clarisse. Let me see," she says,

then with her toothless smile she laughs.

"Of course, of course! These plums. These Clarisse!"

I do not have the heart to walk away

so I pay her for the bag of plums she hands to me.

"And your lady?" she asks. 

"Will she be baking you a plum pie today?"

                   #

The above poem first appeared in my book Impressions: 13 French-Painting Poems (Saddle Brook, NJ: New Worlds Unlimited), 18-21.

Salvatore Buttaci’s two collections of flash fiction 200 Shorts and Flashing My Shorts are both published by All Things That Matter Press and are available in book and Kindle editions at http://www.kindlegraph.com/authors/sambpoet  

His new book If Roosters Don’t Crow, It Is Still Morning: Haiku and Other Poems http://tinyurl.com/76akl73  

Buttaci lives in West Virginia with Sharon, the love of his life.