for the child I did not have, which I thought

once would pierce me utterly. Nothing

beside that dense muscle, faint gold guard hairs

stirring the dark. And if I keep

these scraps of it, what did it keep of me?

A flight, a thunder. A shield of light

dropped before the eyes, pinned

inside that magnificent skull only time

would release. Split back, fade

and reveal. Wind

would open him. Sun would turn him

commonplace: a knot of flies, a ribcage

of shredded tendon, wasp-nest

fragile. The treasure of him, like anything,

gone. Even now, I thumb that face

like a coin I cannot spend. If something in me

ever lived, it lived in him, fishing the cold

trout-thick streams, waking to snow, dying

when he died, which is a comfort.

I must say this. Otherwise, I myself

do not exist. It looked at me

a moment. A flash of green, of gold

and white. Then the dark came down again

between us. Once, I was afraid

of being changed. Now that is finished.

The lynx has me in its eye.

I am already diminished.

Pear

Pear

after Susan Stewart

No one ever died for a bite

of one, or came back from the dead

for a single taste: the cool flesh

cellular or stony, white

as the belly of the winter hare

or a doe’s scut, flicking,

before she mates. Even an unripe one

is delicious, its crisp bite cleaner

almost than water and its many names

just as inviting: Bartlett and Comice,

Anjou, Nashi, Concorde

and Seckel, the pomegranate-skinned

Starkrimson, even the medieval

Bosc, which looks like it dropped

from an oil painting. It is not a sin

to eat one, though you may think

of a woman’s body as you do it,

the bell-shaped swell of it

rich in your hand, and for this reason

it was sacred to Venus, Juno, all women

celebrated or dismissed

in its shape, that mealy sweetness

tunneling from its center, a gold

that sinks back into itself with age.

To ripen a pear, wrap it in paper,

lay it in cloth by an open window

or slip a rotten one beside it

on a metal dish: dying cells call always

to the fresh ones, the body’s

siren song that, having heard

it once, we can’t stop singing.

This is not the fruit

that will send you to hell

nor keep you there;

it will not give you knowledge,

childbirth, power, or love:

you won’t know more pain

for having eaten one, or choke

on a bite to fall asleep

under glass. It has no use

for archer or hero, though

anything you desire from an apple

you can do with the pear, like a dark sister

with whom you might live out

your secret desires. Cook it

in wine, mull it with spices, roast it

with honey and cloves. Time sweetens

and we taste it, so gather the fruit

weeks before ripeness,