I return to the house after two days away
the entry smells sweet and earthy
the pears I had gathered and not yet
eaten - their hard bodies gone brown
and too soft. I hold them gently
so as not to burst their fragile skins,
toss each underhand into the yard
for ground squirrels, the jackrabbit.
I close the door against knowing.

In the refrigerator tarragon crisped
in its shallow plastic sleeve - I crumble
it and its licorice heart lofts as I heave
it too into the tall grass. I imagine it
rooting next spring - a botanical
impossibility. Imagination is not bound
by physical law. I love it though
I shove it into every closet I meet.

The pears never were Whole Foods
beauty queens. This altitude permits
but rocky stone fruit small as a toddler
fist when she's found a penny prize
we will pry away.

The growing season is short
and we're short on water. My
Klamath friend writes drought poems,
I wander the shrunken wetland
too shallow for water birds but rife
with dragonflies, raptors squatting
high in the aspens.

No egrets lean forward impossibly
in the rye fields beside 97 as I drive
south to Klamath Falls. Red tailed
hawks finial the fence posts scraggly
and bereft. Or maybe that's me.