I’ve fallen for this pear tree. In a park full of majestic giant oaks, giant chestnuts, giant sycamores, it is this more modest pear tree that I am drawn to day after day, to sit under to eat my lunch and take a break from staring at my computer screen.

I chose it at random the first day, a little bit off the path and providing just enough dappled shade from the sun. I ate my lunch and then, like Heaney’s threshers in The Wife’s Tale, who “still kept their ease, Spread out, unbuttoned, grateful, under the trees,” I lay down and gazed up through the branches. It was then that I noticed something I hadn’t noticed as I walked past it or under it.

About six feet from the ground, it forks. The branches to one side of the fork are lifeless. No leaves grow, no buds. It is bare but for the lichen that has crept along it. The other side of the fork, in contrast, is heavy with life. The branches sag under the weight of innumerable pears that will be ripe by autumn, food for humans, food for animals, carrying the seeds of the offspring of this tree.

I’m drawn to the perseverance of this pear tree, to its wonky imperfection. Something happened to it – a lighning strike perhaps – that irreparably damaged one half of it, yet the other half carries on steadfast and lively. And I come to see that the damaged part might still have its role to play too, providing balance and stability, helping to anchor the still lively half.

A bumblebee lands on my brightly coloured trousers, resting in the shade of the tree for a moment before going on its way again. There are other insects too, not passing through but living here, making the tree their home. On both forks of the pear tree, I see intricate spider webs and, at the base, a hole made by some small animal. There are rabbit droppings on the ground around me. The tree, as a whole, is a place of liveliness, home to or way point for so many animals, me included.

As I sit up and prepare to return to work, I look around and see, not far away, smaller pear trees and saplings, surely the offspring of this one. The tree, despite its imperfections and its damaged parts, is living its best pear tree life.