Half of it still stands there swinging in the breeze,
seeming almost to shiver in the autumn chill,
reluctant to change her coat from green to gold,
knowing the reckoning day will surely come.
My Bradford Pear’s pain remained
when its better half split that day,
-- that deciding day –-
when a devilish dancing breeze
became a whip-lash storm
carrying unexpected strength,
cleaving crazily with a maelstrom of might
cracking the left from the right,
splitting the right from the left
dividing my tall, proud pear tree --
lovely leafy limbs in nurtured union.
I trembled to hear it, to see it, fall.
I wept to view its fractured frame.
Time heals, as it tends to do in my life.
I saw tree surgeons saw and seal and separate.
The newly challenged limbs lifted their arms again
to meet the sun, the moon, the snow, the rain,
forgetting the panic, forgetting the pain,
as if deciding What now? What’s left to gain? I waited the winter, watching the leafless skeleton
swinging in the icy wind.
Then the answer came
when nature sprang awake.
White flowers peeked out,
cautious green began to grow
crippled boughs soon looked to the sun
offering a gift of gratitude -- fresh shade.
And, as if there were no past stain nor strain,
began again to stand proudly there
swinging in the breeze.
