I searched the internet, looking for a poem about pear trees, That I might filch from another mind some profundity to echo my despair In glancing up from my table today to see nothing but rounds of pear trunk Lying haphazardly among the pile of their tree’s own sawdust - Frog fasteners a giant seamstress had discarded, not wanting The odd sizes and dun colors for her Sunday jacket. Yesterday’s dawn beheld, as it had for forty-one years, my yard’s corner anchor Standing regally, nearly fifty feet high, perhaps trying to keep pace with skyscraping evergreens across the street. Holding court over the forsythias and lilacs, its higher branches venturing south over the fence To spy on the daycare children as they climbed to the fort at the top of their playhouse To survey the world over their backyard’s fences, the pear tree was my constant companion From the day thirty-seven years ago when I first became a homeowner. Waystation for Joel Gray, Magdalena the Red and generations of other squirrels, Temporary refuge for rare flicker-visitor Stewart Granger, and Rufus, a rufous-sided towhee, Agnes and Lucille, the forever-complaining Western jays, an occasional woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, Nuthatches, sparrows, chickadees and the Hell’s Angels, forever-together starling flock, The pear tree had sheltered them all as I watched. It watched my almost-four-year-old daughter play in her painted-pink tractor-tire sandbox And stood as background in her childhood pictures as she posed by her first snowman, And later, pear-laden, became background in pictures of her in her high school Colorguard uniform, Practicing flag routines and laughing with friends. Backgound, always background. Anchor, always my safe home anchor, Through happy times, grievous times, divorce, remarriage and coping with my own mortality. And now the tree is brutally hacked to pieces, smaller branches fed unceremoniously into a noisily uncaring chipper, Each large trunk piece carefully cut just so many inches tall, Chunked to fit perfectly into a fireplace for as-yet unknown needy recipients, And strewn haphazardly near the base of the missing tree. I had stood in the shade of the pear branches last week, hands on its rough trunk, Tearfully breaking to it the news that Reason would win out, come July 29th, Because by its very nature, its limbs, growing upward so closely to its trunk, Could break off its branches in high wind or ice storms, and that Only luck, so far, had kept that from happening. It would no longer suffer the pain of the brown fungus now slowly taking over, One branch at a time. I had thanked it profusely for always being there for us, For producing gorgeous foliage, blossoms and Pears – some years many, some years few, some years none – All of which we left for birds and insects to discover as Nature would have it. It was I who had greeted the workmen about noon. The arborist had never seen a pear tree so tall, And the cutting foreman spent quite some time calculating how best to approach his job. I left him and his crew to their work and went inside, Forcing myself to watch the whole process, to sadistically take pictures and short videos of the process Every few seconds as some kind of penitence, much as Henry VIII could have watched The executions he had ordered For the wives he had once loved. There was no way to anticipate the searing grief I feel today as I write this Through resigned but bitter tears; It was what I had to do. A different crew is coming tomorrow to grind out the stump. I will not watch, nor take pictures. I do not need to see the grave dug. No King has ever cried as much as I. It was what I had to do. Now I wait, hoping for the condolence of the return of the birds and the squirrels.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 22:56:41 +0000