The Pear Tree
Poetry by Sara Shea
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Poetry by Sara Shea. Wildfire, drought, pears, home, motherhood, longevity.
The Pear Tree
I.
Our two-room Carolina cabin
built on this farmstead in 1860,
was hand-hewn chestnut oak,
chinked and daubed against the wind.
A pear tree, planted that same year,
took root beside the stone chimney.
II.
That tree flared white every spring,
bees buzzing its bones awake.
By summer, we hauled bushels
of green pears, tossed bruised ones
to the cows who crunched them
open in the pasture,
juice sluicing their muzzles.
By autumn, golden pears
wept sugar into tall grass—
hornets drunk on the spoils.
I poached pears in wine,
baked cobblers and galettes,
ate them fresh with brie—
sticky-fingered, full.
We sealed the rest in jars—
lined like lanterns of sweetness,
glowing on cellar shelves,
(saving some summer for later).
You, my daughter,
were just two months old
when I strained soft fruit
through a sieve,
canned your first winter’s meal—
golden,
sweet enough to outshine
the long dark.
III.
Autumn drought
whittled brittle undergrowth
to kindling,
coiled kudzu to tinder twine.
November brought the smoke.
High on ridgelines,
flames began their dance—
winds lashing them hard
through the valley’s hollowed gut,
toward our farm.
Smoke thickened
into a second sky,
air heavy with what had been—
needles, leaves, nests, wings.
Sun gone blood-red,
valley a throat full of ash.
I fled with you, my love,
your lungs too new
for that kind of darkness.
Fire raged for months,
devouring seven thousand acres
of Blue Ridge forest.
IV.
Midwinter, we returned.
The farmstead stood.
Home. Pastures. Spared.
Pear tree—charred, yet alive.
Burned forest
flushed green by spring.
New leaves burst through ash—
stubborn as any life
trying to outlive the future.
The old pear tree bloomed again,
a bride veiled in white,
faithful to the season.
But no bees came.
Not that spring.
No bugs, no hornets, no wasps.
Fire had hushed them all,
stolen their hunger, their hum.
Blossoms fell like tears,
drifting
in an empty sky.
V.
My love, I’d hoped your first pears
would be fresh from the branch.
But through that hot, dry summer
of your first year,
I nursed you
under a barren tree.
I nourished you
with jars of pear preserves—
amber-sweet, sealed before the fire.
And with every spoonful
I feared for your inheritance—
for the world to come.
And within that story
lies the seed
of who you are.
For the visually impaired or those using TTS reading aids: this is the end of the poem.
Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as student associate editor for The Kenyon Review. She’s pursued graduate studies through the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville and at Western Carolina University, where she studied with Ron Rash. Her work has appeared in Connecticut River Review, Quarterly West, Static in Our Stars, Amsterdam Quarterly, Gaslamp Pulp, The Petigru Review, New Plains Review, The Awakenings Review, and Atlanta Review. Shea is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the New Millennium Poetry Prize judged by U.K. poet laureate Andrew Motion. Shea writes professionally, producing marketing materials for a fine arts gallery in Asheville, NC.
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