The Pear Tree
THE crooked tree, more worn than old, Unfailingly each autumn bears
Her comic crop of scrubby pears For men to scorn and boys to scold.
Yet every May she has her hour, Is clad in white, has ecstasies With all the well-bred orchard trees Born with far happier fruiting power.
Then wroth at having softened so To give her whiteness, heavens at frown, In slate-blue hardness bearing down, Marvel they do not strike the blow—
But not as one in borrowed lace Nor as a poor intruding guest, But proudly does she face the west, Claiming her right to love and grace.
Against all doom, with cool precision Of wet leaf, rain blob, silver fine, She seems all courage caught in line, Naked and startling as a vision.
As clear as in a pool, her heart Is full of nested chaffinches :
To her they trust, not other trees. They trust her when the winters freeze, They trust her when the swallows dart.
GEOFFREY JOHNSON.
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