Pears. Pears. Pears.

Every year growing up my mom would make us can pears. Hundreds and hundreds of pears scattered across the kitchen, blanketing every surface in a green layer of fruit. First we peal, then we core and then we cook. I hated every minute of it. I'd walk away from every batch with sore hands and sticky fingers. My mom always promised me it would be worth it come January, and it always was. The sticky sweet taste of pears became a comfort from January through April reminding me that summer would return.
My sister just had a baby. 7 lbs 20 inches of pure perfection bundled up in a dinosaur blanket. His full head of black hair poking out above the dinosaurs and footprints of the fabric. Every day I smell his head in with the hope that he still has that new baby smell, and every day I'm not disappointed. When my sister first found out she was pregnant she kept track of how big the baby was on her phone. I'd ask her weekly how big it was and she beamed with excitement as the little creature inside of her grew to different sizes of fruits. One day she told me he was the size of a grape. I looked her straight in the eye and said
"someday that grape inside of you is gonna get married and have little grapes of its own." She just looked at me and said.
"You're weird"
Now as he's growing and learning this poem in Fire In the Pasture makes me think of him. This new father is telling his son of all the wonderful things he's going to experience. Just as he thinks of his son, I think of my nephew. That someday he will smell pears and probably can them, and hopefully he doesn't hate it like I do. This poem's form makes me think of it more to myself, Because it doesn't have a classical poem type structure it makes me think of it in more of a thought structure.