the other half of the pair -

Stanley Kunitz:





My Mother's Pears



Plump, green-gold, Worcester's pride,

    transported through autumn skies,

       in a box marked HANDLE WITH CARE



sleep eighteen Bartlett pears,

    hand-picked and polished and packed

       for deposit at my door,



each in its crinkled nest

    with a stub of stem attached

       and a single bright leaf like a flag.



A smaller than usual crop,

    but still enough to share with me,

       as always at harvest time.



Those strangers are my friends

    whose kindness blessed the house

       my mother built at the edge of town



beyond the last trolley-stop

    when the century was young, and she

       proposed, for her children's sake,



to marry again, not knowing how soon

    the windows would grow dark,

       and the velvet drapes come down.



Rubble accumulates in the yard,

    workmen are hammering on the roof,

       I am standing knee-deep in dirt



with a shovel in my hand. 

    Mother has wrapped a kerchief round her head,

       her glasses glint in the sun.



When my sisters appear on the scene,

    gangly and softly tittering,

       she waves them back into the house



to fetch us pails of water,

    and they skip out of our sight

       in their matching middy blouses.



I summon up all my strength

    to set the pear tree in the ground,

       unwinding its burlap shroud.



It is taller than I.  "Make room

    for the roots!" my mother cries,

       "Dig, the hole deeper."









There is something about this poem.  I always want to cry.

It is the mastery of Stanley Kunitz and the poignancy of those pears.