This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams is my second favorite poet of all time. His words are often simple, but they stir evocative imagery. One of his most famous poems is "This Is Just To Say," a sweet and good-humored piece of found poetry one might imagine he wrote to his wife Florence. Despite the playful nature of the poem, I have always associated it with theft. Any time I hear of something being stolen, the opening lines run through my head.

The air conditioning guys showed up this morning while we were trying to move some furniture before work. They went into the master bedroom, came back out, checked every room, went back into the master bedroom, and cursed.

"What's wrong?"
"There's a box that has all our copper tubing and wires in your bedroom there."
"Okay...."
"It's empty."

This is just to say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

Luckily, the company we bought the house from isn't going to charge us for new copper. I've tried my hardest to keep an eye on things, but with so many people going in an out over the last week, there's no telling what happened. I'd like to believe they just accidentally put an empty box in the house, but I'm not that naive.

The head air conditioning guy ran into town to get some more from the hardware store on the housing company's dime, while the other guy started setting everything up. Soon we should have A/C. Now if only we had clean water.