Green Plums – A Poem

Such is the photo-like quality of Green Plums, I didn’t realise until reading the National Gallery of Art’s discussion of Joseph Decker’s paintings in American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I (pages 123-125) that not all the plums are as solid as they look.

“The illusion of waxy green spheres of plums … is accomplished with flat, visible strokes of many hues of green, briskly accented with white. Two plums, at the center left and just inside the basket at center right, are suggested with the merest coloring that barely defines them as spheres.”

I don’t know if these plums are in fact greengages, but “greengage” sounds so lovely.

More of my ekphrastic poetry here. More on free verse here. More Decker paintings here.

Green Plums

greengage plum
illusory reine claude
queen of honey plums
escape your box

your clean crisp lines
your many hues of green
promise bitterness
but deliver sweetness
honey spilled split plums

one ghost of a greengage
a painter’s afterthought

©elsp 2026

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