Ekphrastic Poetry | Family History
Pears for My Heirs
A pear calligram made in Australia
The pear, they say, has the sway of a female, with a line and profile quite divine and, some say, it’s erotic. Picked in its prime, aromatic sublime, a texture and sweetness like no other. Legend bestows it grace, wisdom, and health, fertility too, and a maternal kind of affection.
A pear knows its place; it never falls far from its tree. Plant a pear for your heirs, a proverbial truth; it takes time to bear the best fruit.
Called Bartlett by some, Williams bon chrétien (Good Christian) by others, it’s the favoured varietal world over. For me, here in Australia, the name harbours familial association, historic and quaintly sentimental.
Her name was Charlotte Bartlett, born 1805 Dorchester, southern England. Wife to a cabinet maker, George was his name. Together they reared eight little dear ones, who like pears on their pear tree, grew prolifically. Charlotte, my paternal great-great-great grandmother, a female branch of my family tree.
In 1852, news of a golden land downunder reached the ears of the G & C Bartlett household. Time to uproot and replant their pear stock. Good fortune as much opportune, they set forth from Plymouth in autumn, aboard a barque aptly named, Time and Truth.
The truth is, it was a bloody long way around the Cape of Good Hope, and it took a bloody long time to reach the pioneers’ port of Geelong, British colony of Victoria. The truth is the voyages of the day were riddled with disease. Take your pick — typhus, variola, dysentery, typhoid fever, measles, scurvy, pertussis, scarlatina to name the most deadly. Time and Truth berthed on January 5th 1853, sadly six lives departed en route, five of them children. Mercifully, none were hers.
Fate, however, has a way of upending lives. Three weeks passed and so too her youngest, a 5 year-old sprout she called Albert. They buried him in virgin soil, a small mound on the ground in the blazing summer sun of coastal Victoria. Two weeks hence, Charlotte joined him, mother and son reunited in foreign land that death contrived to make their home. Five weeks later, Richard wilted and withered, went the same way as his younger brother and mother.
Her family of 10 whittled to seven in little more than two months ashore a far-distant island that was brutal and cruel and had none of what you would call creature comforts. It would be fair to declare that their type of pear was ill-suited to the alien variation of Mother Nature — Australia.
What was the point? Was the sacrifice worth it? Better to pack up who and what was left, go home defeated but alive. They stayed.
Charlotte’s pear stock came good. Took root, grew and thrived, multiplied, diversified, over and over. A proverbial truth — plant pears for your heirs. We’re now six generations of ‘made in Australia’.
© Carolyn Hastings 2022
Written in response to Paper Poetry’s Week 5 poetry prompt: still life ekphrastic with special thanks to Trisha Traughber for giving me the idea to try a calligram.
Wondering if I can tempt a few of the poets amongst us to join the prompt — Louise Foerster | John O'Neill | M.T. Pariti | Long Lost | Paroma Sen | Mark Tulin | Frank Larkin | Lubna Yusuf — and any others who are so inclined. 🙏
Please find all you need to know about the prompt right here —
Thank you all for being here. 🙏 💕
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