April is National Poetry Month! Edna St. Vincent Millay: "The Plum-Gatherer"

Millay, Millay!


The Plum-Gatherer

The angry nettle and the mild
Grew together under the blue-plum trees.
I could not tell as a child
Which was my friend of these.

Always the angry nettle in the skirt of his sister
Caught my wrist that reached over the ground,
Where alike I gathered,--for the one was sweet and the other wore a frosty dust--
The broken plum and the sound.

The plum-trees are barren now and the black knot is upon them,
That stood so white in the spring.
I would give, to recall the sweetness and the frost of the lost blue plums
Anything, anything.
I thrust my arm among the grey ambiguous nettles, and wait.
But they do not sting.