every round fruit you could dream
stacked in perfect piles gleaming
for the giving sweating their sweet
juices their scent of readiness to
be split she taught us by silent
gesture to know ripeness with 
a soft squeeze we sought the dark
plums ready to shed their skins
open to us and let us drink our
fill

plundering blossoms like bees

in the small shed by the dock
the smell of gas and oil the
greasy rags the Evinrude lay 
dissected and open in innocent
exposure you caught me at
thirteen infixed me harmed me
so gently I didn’t understand
I was wounded until years
later

thundering like a storm I was

my own bowl filled to brimming
I was my own spilling and stain
the dogs chased rocks we threw
into the river dove to the bottom
and brought the heavy stones to
our feet all afternoon their teeth
worn smooth how long I’ve 
worried this one it turned me
into a vowel long low and 
open



____

Rebecca Siegel lives and writes in Vermont. Her poems have appeared in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, as part of PoemCity Montpelier, Dust Poetry Magazine, Analog Magazine, Goat’s Milk Magazine, Zócalo Public Square, Container’s Multitudes series, Straight Forward Poetry, and elsewhere.