If you are afflicted with pear blight,
you will feel it in your limbs. If you
fail to blossom, or if your blooms are
nipped, browned by an errant frost, then
you will have a silent, solitary spring,
visited neither by bees nor wasps, exempt
from the frenzy of making fruit. Take heart:
This may be only for one year, or two,
and you can still make leaves and talk
to yourself, bend in the wind or brace
against rain, which will still come (unless
there’s also a drought). You may be visited
by some manner of small, sucking bug.
If you have no blooms — if you’re not
making fruit — you might find there are
worse companions than these, worse ways
to pass a lonely season or two, or three.

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Also … Hey, I’m back! I took an extended Christmas break but will now resume the daily posts for a while.