Tag: pears

A Pear’s Momentary Perfection

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There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear
when it is perfect to eat.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silver dust
lifted from the earth,
higher than my arms reach,
you have mounted.
O silver,
higher than my arms reach
you front us with great mass;

no flower ever opened
so staunch a white leaf,
no flower ever parted silver
from such rare silver;

O white pear,
your flower-tufts,
thick on the branch,
bring summer and ripe fruits
in their purple hearts.
~Hilda Doolittle Dawson (H.D.) “Pear Tree”

…we noticed the pear tree,
the limbs so heavy with fruit
they nearly touched the ground.
We went out to the meadow; our steps
made black holes in the grass;
and we each took a pear,
and ate, and were grateful. 
~Jane Kenyon from “Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer”

A moment’s window of perfection is so fleeting
in a life of bruises, blemishes and worm holes.
Wait too long and nectar-smooth flesh
softens to mush and rot.

The unknown rests beneath a blushed veneer:
perhaps immature gritty fruit unripened,
or past-prime browning pulp brimming with fruit flies
readily tossed aside for compost.

Our own sweet salvage from warming humus
depends not on flawless flesh deep inside
but heaven’s grace dropped into our laps:
to be eaten the moment it is offered.

The perfect pear falls when ripe
and not a moment before,
ready to become an exquisite tart made by our neighbor
tasting of a selfless gift of beauty and longing.

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Time’s Fun When You are Having Flies (and Frogs)

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Time’s fun when you’re having flies…
~Kermit the Frog

Time flies like the wind; fruit flies like a banana.
~attributed to Groucho Marx

…the tiny haunting eyes of the fruit flies, and the swooping melody of their Latin name: Drosophila melanogaster, which translates poetically as “dark-bellied dew sipper.”
~Diane Ackerman from “Fruit Flies and Love”

It’s not easy being green unless you also have a dorsal brown stripe and live in a box of ripe pears on the back porch that has become a metropolis of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). 

Then you are in frog heaven with breakfast, lunch and dinner within reach of your tongue any time.

And the Drosophila happily move in to the kitchen any time pears are brought in for preserving.  The apple cider vinegar killing fields I’ve set up on the kitchen counter are capturing hundreds daily, but their robust reproducing (which I carefully studied in undergraduate biology lab) outstrips the effectiveness of my coffee filter funnel death trap lures.

But fruit fly season too shall pass. 

Time flies and time’s fun when you’re having frogs.

But Nothing Can Stopper Time

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…the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time. No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.
~Barbara Crooker “And Now it’s October” from Small Rain.

…but I do try to stopper time.
I try every day
not to suspend it or render it frozen,
but like summer flower and fruit that withers,
to preserve any sweet moment for sampling
through stored words
or pictures
in the midst of my days of winter.
I roll it around on my tongue,
its heady fragrance
becoming today’s lyrical shared moment,
unstoppered,
perpetual
and always intoxicating.

From Laden Boughs

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From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
~Li-Young Lee from Rose

 

 

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On this farm orchard in the north, it’s a harvest of apples and pears rather than peaches.

Each day we fill up on sauce and juice as fruit rains down in the winds of late summer.

Only four months ago these were mere buds opening up to soft petals raining like snow in the spring breezes.  Impossibly, those blossoms became fruit that will sustain us through a bare winter.

From joy to joy to joy.  From wing to wing to wing.  From season to season to season.

Impossible gifts of grace.

 

 

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Time’s Fun When You’re Having Flies

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drosphilabanana

 

bananafly

 

Time’s fun when you’re having flies.
~Kermit the Frog

 

hidingout

 

Time flies like the wind; fruit flies like a banana.
~attributed to Groucho Marx

 

frog96141

 

drosphilatomato

 

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It’s not easy being green unless you also have a dorsal brown stripe and live in a box of ripe Asian pears on the front porch that has become a metropolis of Drosophila (fruit flies).  Then you are in frog heaven with breakfast, lunch and dinner within reach of your tongue any time.

And the Drosophila happily move in to the kitchen any time some pears are brought in.  The apple cider vinegar killing fields I’ve set up on the kitchen counter are capturing dozens daily, but their robust reproducing (which I carefully studied in undergraduate biology lab) outstrips the effectiveness of my coffee filter funnel death trap lures.

Fruit fly season too shall pass.  Time flies and time’s fun when you’re having frogs.

 

 

flylunaria

 

drosophila

Declensions of the Day

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thistle9281

 

thistle8215

 

octoberrose15

 

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The thistles, rooted out, throng in again;
The single regal rose is mobbed by weeds;
The plums, the pears, the ripening apples, rain
In the sun; and past summer plants new seeds.

Here, or there, these common yearly things
Repeat, repeat, and gardens do not range:
Yet thistles, roses, fruit trees, birds, and stings
Come to an end, and the church bells sound a change.

These many soft declensions of the day,
So hard to take to heart, bear life away.
~Dunstan Thompson from “Passage”

 

 

pears9614

 

fallenpear

 

This winding down,
this descent into
shorter days and longer nights,
this preparation for an autumn austerity,
reminds me of my ongoing emptying,
once so full of fruit and seed,
now clinging to what is left me~
the joys, the tears,
the eyes of my brimming heart.

 

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verywetrainyday

 

sunriserain

 

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We turned into the drive,
and gravel flew up from the tires
like sparks from a fire. So much
to be done—the unpacking, the mail
and papers … the grass needed mowing ….
We climbed stiffly out of the car.
The shut-off engine ticked as it cooled.

And then we noticed the pear tree,
the limbs so heavy with fruit
they nearly touched the ground.
We went out to the meadow; our steps
made black holes in the grass;
and we each took a pear,
and ate, and were grateful.
~Jane Kenyon “Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer”

 

pears9614