In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus notes two women
who climb the inside stairs to the top
of Nelson’s monument, and once there, share
a bag of plums, the pits of which they spit out,
each pit possibly striking people in the street below.
What Joyce meant by this parable isn’t clear—
maybe something about the demons of the past,
maybe something about a future that isn’t anymore,
maybe, that is, something about something lost.
Daughter, I think you should gather some plums,
travel to Vermont, take the elevator to the top
of the Bennington obelisk, eat plum after plum,
wiping from your chin the blue plum juice,
and like the two Dublin women, spit out the pits,
noting each as it falls three hundred feet
through the Vermont air onto the earth below.
Only, my hope is, they take firm root and grow.
