Pear Blossoms
The tiny petals, thin and white, from blossoms of the pear tree fall like flakes of light snow in the breeze upon our cottage laundry line and land on greening grass below while wind chime bells try keeping time.
Appropriate irreverence escorts the dark clouds’ moving in. They kick the sunshine to the curb, like toadies of a tormentor who clear the bully’s sandbox while the wind chime bells keep trying time.
And now the rain begins to fall, gently at first, deluding us. We think all’s safe until the clouds start spitting at our laundry line. We gather up the still-damp clothes while wind chime bells keep awkward time. These slaps to faces sting the more because there’s little choice for us, corona plague’s poor refugees. With thrice-worn outfits we’ve made do. They’ll stand for wearing number four while wind chime bells keep up with time.
Inside we hang the clothes to dry on bannisters, the shower rod. We’ve pushed the summer house limits and laundered clothes by hand while here to dry them in the fresh warm air, and wind chime bells keep random time.
At season’s end we’ll pick the pears and make a pear sauce out of them. We know this moment’s bitterness will fade and leave no trace to taint the pear sauce over ice cream’s taste while wind chime bells try keeping time.
The Author
Josephine Cannella is a retired English Language Arts teacher who now co-owns a music education business with her third spouse. An open bisexual, she first married a man, then a woman, and now a man again. She has written many poems about love and heartbreak, and she tends to be more confessional in style than is popularly considered to be good literature. Not really caring about what is popular, she likes to use poetic forms, such as sonnet structures, Sapphic verse, and villanelle. She has studied memoir writing with C Flanagan Flynn, and her poetry has been published in The American Scholar's poetry column "Next Line Please" in 2018 and in From Whispers to Roars Climax 2020 edition.
Josephine Cannella, Cornwall Bridge, CT