Cherry Blossoms is a spring poem, a celebration of nature’s beauty and fine art.

Cherry Blossoms – Spring Poem

Every summer, the sun sends cherry blossoms falling. Every floating petal is a letter written but never sent to something that some time, bloomed, but time ran out. Every spring is another burst of baby pink between people. And if, like me, you weep over cherry blossoms in June, don’t! Their finery is never flimsy like we imagine, their petal fibres churn out fleshy cherries mid-summer, and this is how. Out of the bones of the earth, they shoot and spill and so they lift the lids of our spent eyes. No longer can we keep them bolted. It is as if they moor us on a bed of sugar candy once a year. Though thin as paper and lighter than your touch, weighed down and bunched, they can carry a galloping horse. A firm grip is not of twigs edging to be flaring stars, yet the bugs and the bees never once pass them by. This is what I learned about time the day your letter slid through the crack in the door.

Dear Mary, it’s that time of the year again.

I step in under the cherry tree, a thousand pink quilts drown your ink, my fingers pick them off and stow them away in the envelope you bought someplace I’ve never been. I put them beneath the leaves that once lacquered your face, some smudged your penwork.

I hope you are keeping well too, what an uneventful year, thank God, right now, I’m counting
seven thousand, three hundred and fifty-seven cherry blossoms, one finer than the next.

I tot two hundred and start raking the ground for more. Later inside, I sow them on the sill to dry, a hot sea salt bath mid-winter will poise the resurrection for your little gowns and mine.

I’ve been plotting how to send you a cherry pie to stop my bulging bellyaching. Tell me, do you still make cherry conserve?

Beside the cherry trunk on the garden table, cherries run into sun-melt butter and onto the page.

Yes, my scullery is jammed, John!

goes my pink ink around the taped on taffy leaflets. That time of year has cheeks bloom the colour of blush or perhaps it is the Xs I cross as the tip of my finger sails across your letter. I dip a bunch of blossoms into the jar of rain to not have to lick the gum. On the flap, I total

nine thousand, seven hundred and thirty-eight cherry blossoms, one lovelier than the next.