Barbara Leon

Barbara Leon, an Aptos, California resident, is a writer and editor in the natural health field. Her poetry has appeared in americas review, the Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, Bathyspheric Review, BorderSenses literary magazine, Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, In Our Own Words, Paterson Literary Review (Honorable Mention 2007 Allen Ginsberg Awards) and Porter Gulch Review (2004 Poet of the Year).

Pears

She remembers summer’s end
herself: blonde braids and barelegged
in one of those play outfits girls wore in the 50’s
short shorts and flowery halter banded across her flat chest.
Cooling off after supper,
folks gossiping in metal lawn chairs,
swatting mosquitoes, watching sunset,
zinnias flamed crimson against a whitewashed fence.
How she’d follow her neighbor to the pear tree
that grew, wild and unkempt, heavy with yellow globes.
He’d hold a long stick to each branch,
shake hard, releasing showers on the grass, then
split each pear. His calloused thumbs
scooped seeds as he fed her the halves,
pulp soft, juice dripping,
sweet and sticky as an August day.
Each summer the girl grew taller, stronger
and one season she budded out. The neighbor
thrust his hand between her legs, those same workman’s
fingers parting her flesh, as though tearing open a fruit.
Dusk swallowed the tree, and the pears
left to molder in the field.