You, too, could hate pears
if you tried. You too could pick
a hatred — plump, meat-soft,
cloying, overly-earnest —
if you reached high enough.
They're just not the right shape.
Fruit comes in shapes. Fruit comes
in rounds and oblongs
and delicate teardrop ruby cuts.
What shape is a pear? What is "pear-shaped?"
What audacity, named after itself.
A pear is too eager to be cut.
Nothing gives the way a pear does.
Gives and gives and gives and for what?
To be bright and mild and of teeth?
Nothing should want to yield
like that. To be so simple,
not even to be cut, but
like dancing, like back-leading,
the hint of a cut, the intonation
of a request, and the pear
falls apart. What a gimmick.
Where is the tartness? The way
the flesh should cleave sharp and tight?
Nothing but sweet and grain and give.
Cain himself kept
the pear for himself, knowing
nothing about it was harsh,
which is all that God beckons outward.
No, a pear is a failure. A pear
wants something it shouldn't have,
which is for you to love it,
even though it is easy,
because it is soft,
because it asks,
and because it is all
it has ever wanted.