This Is 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

Poetry can be multifaceted and versatile in its form and function, and while a poem like this seems to be less structural than, say, a sonnet, it maintains a more stripped down format that seems more suited to its simplistic content. In essence, or on a surface level, this poem appears to be an apology. If we look at the title, “This is Just to Say”, we can deduce that “This” refers to the poem and the “is Just to Say” is the action of the apology: I am writing this poem just to say I am sorry for eating your plums.

The speaker of the poem explains that he or she has eaten the plums that “you were probably / saving / for breakfast” and goes on to explain how good they were. We can say the speaker has acted negligently (since he or she has eaten the plums knowing there was a possibility “you” were saving them) and may even be taunting the “you” about how tasty they really were. We could also say the speaker acted impulsively or that he or she could not help themselves. There are several readings that we could get out of these brief lines.

The brevity of the poem also allows for specific focus on the words and not one of these words seems to be wasted. They each have a purpose, whether is it to describe a sensation, and action, or even a request. The brevity of the poem also seems to tie into the brevity of the moment (of eating the plums) and the brevity of the apology. This is one poem with three two separate moments and two separate entities. That is a lot to fit into twelve lines.

-Samantha Markey