Spring is here, bringing with it Passover, Easter, and Cherry Blossom Festivals in both D.C. and in Japan, where the blooms are still making their way north.  Japanese language has a whole vocabulary to describe the transitory beauty of cherry blossoms.  It awes me that within a country that invented the word karoshi (for working oneself to death), businesses, schools, and government entities close down to celebrate the season.  As Japanese cities in Northern climes continue with what became my favorite holiday while I lived there, it seems fitting to make this poem my first blog entry. Enjoy! 

 Blossomings: Fourteen Views
(Homage to Wallace Stevens)

1.
The young woman finger’s his shirt cuff
as they sit under a pink petal rain.
Spring’s fleeting regret.

2.
Rows of silk-pink lollipops
line the mall esplanade,
encased in concrete.
A child’s come-on to grab and get.

3.
A firefly a-lights against
a single pink halo.

4.
Sakura Forecast, 2009:
Because temperatures
were above average,
the cherry blossoms are opening
several days ahead
of their average schedule.

5.
Against jagged black branches,
soft laughter punctuates
soft petal waterfalls
silvered by moonlight.

6.
A lone pink petal flutters down,
ground between concrete
and high-heel boot tip.

7.
With lead-white skin
and red half-lips the women proceed
with pigeon-toed steps
along the Festival esplanade.
Their hair combs mimic
the pastel pink ringlets
that line their procession.

8.
In Japan, they celebrate the cherry tree,
having plucked this tradition
from the Chinese, who long before,
went plumb-blossom viewing.

9.
She showers him
with pink petal insults.

10.
A sleeping man hides his face
from the falling pink rain
with the newspaper
that he never started to read.

11.
Politicians, lobbyists, power brokers, pundits.
When spring comes to the Potomac,
do they ever stop to wonder
at Dr. Takamine’s
three-thousand plus twenty trees?

12.
As a child, in between
the blossoms falling
and the fruits falling,
I plucked ripe plumbs
from the beaks of blackbirds.

13.
Chimpanzees stop to watch sunsets.
Who first stopped to watch
pink petals falling in the spring?

14.
Un-embalmed, in time
I will become my own blossoming
headstone.