WHERE THE WILD PEARS GROW

Along a dusty road a wild pear tree grows.  A pear tree whose blossoms are quite still.

*************

By a house collapsed.

A pear tree is blooming;

Here a battle was fought.

'Haiku'

R.H. Blyth

The house has no doubt been in disrepair for no apparent reason, from disuse or lack of repair or love.  The pear tree stands firm and tall and proud and beautiful.  It has no further association with the house, 

Yet blooms next to this crumbled hut. 

A life journey where we stand next to the dilapidation of a lifetime of lessons and a lifetime of times and places and spaces where battles have been fought. 

Lost and won. 

But we still have the ability to bloom.

Before and after...

The price of freedom.

When despair for the world grows in me 

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry