Pear Down

A limb of our 100-year-old bartlet pear tree tore itself off today.

It landed next to the trunk, like it took a nose dive, no parachute.

True, a single pear weighs little.

But this branch, the width of a lady's wrist, held nine dozen. Toss them into a crate and your back strains to haul it to the minivan.

I feel strangely guilty, as if we asked Old Man Bartlet to do too much, that we should have realized, should have intervened. Anything.

Instead ... we did nothing. And time ran out.