Pear Blossom Poetry

Last spring, smitten with the sensory seduction of our blooming pear trees, I slipped briefly into a lyric trance, swaying and singing about pear blossom poetry.

Pear blossoms are poems in which poire rhymes with pure and love floats into longevity like the fragrance of springtime mixed with the sweet dessert of late summer. (Source: Pear Blossoms)

There’s something sweetly seductive about bountiful blooms in an orchard, at once enchanting yet tinged with anticipated nostalgia rooted in ephemerality.

The bittersweet transience evident in each fluttering petal inspired today’s pear blossom poem.

Pear Blossoms

White petals cloud
the bluebird sky.

Bees buzz, knowing
this will not last.

Butterflies hum,
Moonglow, Bartlett,
and Aurora.

Sweet promises
fade like fragrance
in chill May air.

More Pear Blossoms Poetry

I’d like to gather a few more notable poems, a pieces of poems, that meditate on pear blossoms starting with this haiku by Bashō.

Pear blossoms—
a woman reads a letter
by moonlight.

— Matsuo Bashō

Like Bashō, some of the following explicitly identify as pear blossoms starting poetry. Others might need a bit of imagination.

The rain in spring is fine as silk,
A light breeze brushes the riverbank.
Deep in the courtyard, where no one sees,
Pear blossoms fall quietly, layer on layer.

— Du Mu, “Spring Landscape”

—//—

Moved by the times, flowers draw tears from my eyes…

— Du Fu, “A Spring View” 

—//—

…the pear tree blanches,
first in its bridal shyness,
then in the spent confetti of its fall.

— Richard Wilbur, “The Flowering Trees”

—//—

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

— Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”