Iberian Plums

A small harvest of plums from the supermarket. Angeleno plums from Portugal, and Sun Gold ones from Spain. Delicate, soft fruit, the bloom on the Angelenos very easily smudged, the Sun Gold like bowls of yellow glass. There is something contemplative and Chinese about the soft September light - greyer again this morning - falling onto the bloom of fruit that has come from the Mediterranean, or at least the Iberian peninsula. And together the little orbs become abstract, a pattern of plum-gold and plum-purple, that suggest the harvest, the spattering of juice on fingers, stuffed mouths and happy children in an orchard; like the shouts of happy children blackberrying in the forest yesterday, their voices clear on the still air as the year fades.