Eating a Pear on the Front Porch, Late February

Eating a Pear on the Front Porch, Late February

Bird songs like sweet nothings, or your mother coming into the room when you’re having a bad dream.  She swoops over your trembling body and croons, “it’s all all all right little one!”  Off to the West, angles of azure and delicate clouds spread a deep yes you want to fall into, oh sky the color of infatuation, of throwing caution to the wind.  But over to the East, there’s no sky at all, only Mordor on the march like a storm of orcs, and they have blades with thunder and lightning embedded in the steel. You sit on the porch with two dogs, both gray of muzzle; one bears the pink scars of cancer. They sleep that blessed dog sleep of simplicity, paws twitching, a tail thwacking against the deck.  You eat a pear with skin reminiscent of fall maple leaf colors: brightly tender salmon, deep golds.  The flesh is a manifestation of giving, so you take.  Lick your fingertips of sticky juice, watch the clouds roll in closer, feel the temperature drop like someone opened a walk-in freezer.  Your porch stands exactly where the two skies meet: this house, the cusp of everything.  Don’t think about climate change, or water wars, or the leaflessness of a Spring that has come too early.  Listen to the birdsong, the whistle of mourning dove wings in mating flights.  Smell rain hovering over your American town like a memory you can’t quite retrieve.  Feed the pear core to that dog at your feet, the one with the scars who wakes up, nudges your hand; scold her when she asks for more.

Deborah A. Miranda