The Pear Poem by Morgan Michaels

An apple lost us Paradise.
Grapes are likely to be sour.
Plantains are lewd- please,
do not even go there;
whereas Demeter's daughter
and a pomegranate cost us six
entire months of lousy weather
if what's written's true and it probably is.
But you, golden pear
and all your tribe, I've never known
linked to any serious malice
or any downfall but your own-
so, I commend you- crown you King
of every tree-born thing,
Marquis of Fruits and Duke of Roots.


And I must say, for I believe it,
you look sort of pleasantly bodacious
sitting on that tile
painted over with lotuses, x's and arabesques
as it is, carmine, azurra
sunflower and pistachio
smuggled in from Talavera De La Reina
long years ago;
and you appear, now, as though beaten with a stick
from a treetop far above the stars
and tumbled light-years here
so big, so knobbed, with so many eyes endowed
you could be taken for a potato-
but you're not, you're sweeter, far,
and beg only to be skinned, sliced,
poached in a little claret, and...eaten!