While Eating a Pear
After we have finished here,
the world will continue its quiet turning,
and the days and months will pass
without the names of Norse and Roman gods.
Time will go by the way it did
before history, pure and unnoticed,
a mystery that arose between the sun and moon
before there was a word
for dawn or noon or midnight,
before there were names for the earth’s
uncountable things,
when fruit hung anonymously
from scattered groves of trees,
light on the smooth green side,
shadow on the other.
Notes
Where Róisín Kelly’s Oranges burned with fierce, deliberate desire, Billy Collins’s While Eating a Pear steps into the quiet, almost hypnotic trance of taste itself. It anchors August’s theme of Feast, showing that abundance isn't always loud or demanding, sometimes it is simply slowing down to notice how a sweet, quiet moment can pause the entire world. By turning a simple fruit into a landscape of reflection, the poem reminds us that to feast is to let the present pull us completely into its fold. #poetry #existential #time #august #nature