Fire blight has touched the pear, and the bright leaves

And rounding fruit crumble to ashes despite the sun,

The showers, the desire to be and be more;

Shepherd’s Crook has withered the branches to a spasm

That pulls the tree earthward and breaks it to its grave,

Though the tree is stretching the sky and stroking the earth.

And with my saw and my snips and my bucket of bleach I went

To clip away the virus.  From the litter of leaves and twigs

I wondered how the tree would feel its new absence.

And when a bolus of cancer crowded her lung, and a fuzz

Of cancer nettled her lymph, with a scalpel and saw

They cut into her so a new hollowness thrummed in her chest,

So a new balance, a new breath, will have to be cultivated,

A new limb to lash a heaven, a new trunk to hold a songbird.

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Jared Pearce wrote this poem. And it is true.