To Love A Pear Tree Poem by Cherie Mort

My first taste of love

Was a kiss ‘neath an old pear tree

Potent blooms sent their heady perfume my way

Bathing me in the glory of that beautiful spring day

It was just a kiss; nothing more, nothing less

No unspoken promises or silent vows

Were made, no midnight trysts would pull me

From my bed in the middle of the night

But the woman with the voice of thunder

Sent her commands crackling from the heavens

Striking down my pear tree

I wept in vain, my pleas falling on deaf divine ears

“It will grow back, ” I whispered, “ it will return to me”

For two years I tended that sickly tree, feeding it my love

My love, which it never received, casting it aside

Like something unwanted; like me, hurt and anguished

And so I planted another tree

This, too, started with blooms, but grew cantankerous with age

For twenty years, I toiled over this tree

But it, too, rejected my love

I cut it down with an axe, tired of the self-bruising frustration

And I planted a third pear tree

I was suspicious when it first sprouted

But then I saw that it grew anyways

This tree gave love to me first, and would share it

With no one else

My heart was full; this third and final tree completed me

And as it fell before my eyes, eaten away

By worms and ants and molds

I decided to never again plant another pear tree