Espaliered Pear Trees

by Linda Pastan

You tack the pear trees to the wall

in a mime of crucifixion—

their limbs splayed flat,

their leafed backs toward us—

and water them with a hose.

Last week you called the bonsai

living haiku, paring

its tender branches

as ruthlessly

as you would your nails,

while I could only think

of Chinese women

tottering

on their bound feet.

Here in the garden,

where the cost of beauty

is partly pain, we kneel

on the resilient ground

trying to befriend the soil

we must become.

Long after Eden,

the imagination flourishes

with all its unruly weeds.

I dream of the fleeting

taste of pears.

From Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998, New York: Norton, 1998 (previously published in An Early Afterlife, 1995).