Yiayia’s Pear Tree

It has always been there, growing beside the patio
over half a century, its branches accessible just a
few feet above ground, spreading outward from the trunk
like the fingers of a supplicant hand begging benediction.

It’s one of those trees that need to be climbed,
the texture of its bark perfect for a child’s grip.
The limbs grow gnarled but firm, their prolific fruit
an indulgence to smell, stroke, pluck, taste.

But my Yiayia regarded the tree with cautious unease,
treated it like a Chekhov’s gun throughout my childhood.
She knew the lesson of Icarus, feared the divine’s
reproach of Bellerophon, though I lacked such importance.

Her Cassandran visions saw me crashing down
through the cragged boughs to the crabgrass,
greeted by drunken wasps nursing their appetites on the
rotting bird-pecked pears—broken, swollen, disfigured like me.

Nothing good comes without price in Greece. Baskania—
the belief that my very health & happiness were anathema
to someone’s evil eye. Success a millstone round the neck.
Jealousy would destroy me, another naïve Grecian cut down young.

Forty years later, I remain unharmed, but unfamed.
I smell my childhood in the branches; indifferent birds wing
among the fruit. They caw in her voice Told you so.
Nameless though I am, I never fell, never fell.