That Was Just to Say

This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I can’t honestly say that I love this poem. It’s not a bad poem; it is, however, a piece that serves as a strong example for the concept of poetry. The people who don't read and even look oddly at poetry look at poems like these and think “What the heck is this? Even my pet could write like this!”
Yes, while this poem could look like a couple of sentences strung together to the casual reader, but to a person who knows how to read poetry and has an appreciation for the medium it shows talent. No ordinary person could have put these sentences out and still invoke something. The poem could create a different response in each reader: When I first read it I smiled, noticing the tone in the last stanza. I heard a smirking, playful, voice. The author essentially says “I took what you’d been saving and I loved it.”
I didn’t think of plums when I read the poem, I thought of what the plums represented. They are fruits, the fruits of labor. Either money or something else that was significant to the person whom the narrator addresses yet they were purposefully taken. Funny, albeit a bit mean.

~Nitesh Arora