The Flowering Pear Tree Blooming Today

The flowering pear tree blooming today Outside the house stinks like the fish My grandfather took me to buy at the market On Knickerbocker Avenue forty years ago.

On the way he held my hand brick hard, As numb and stinging As when I fell down Going up a stoop and slapping it on the gray stone.

And there was nothing but stink coming from the store: From the bushels of snails crawling out from the sides, From the cheese hanging like upturned arms on hooks, From the coffee grinding near the register.

And there was nothing but stink on the street: From the sewer grating and tar and gasoline And the urine of boys from other neighborhoods Past the el whose mothers let them piss On the steel hubcaps of Cadillacs.

Grandpa ordered the fish, which really didn’t smell On its bed of ice, and he mumbled incoherently in his dialect, The same way he would years later in his hospital bed When he was in a coma and rambling in the stink of antiseptic About brick-laying in the Empire State Building.

But today there is nothing but the glorious stink of spring; The tree we planted when David was born is blooming. And tomorrow the wind will scale the petals And the leaves will be as green as fruit In the hands of young boys again.